


All Empires Laid Low

by garnettrees



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Afterlife, Alien Planet, Angry Erik, BAMF Logan, Beach Divorce, Biological Warfare, Biotechnology, Calm Down Erik, Canon Jewish Character, Colonization, Courtly Love, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dune elements, Epic Love, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, Eternal Life, Future Fic, Genosha, Hopeless Romantic But Not A Very Nice One, Immortality, Immortals in Space, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Intrigue, Loneliness, M/M, Mad Scientists, Mutant OCs, Mutant Politics, Mutants, Nuclear Warfare, Politics, Poor Charles, Post-Apocalypse, Post-X3, Protective Erik, Psychic Bond, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection, Reunions, Science Fiction, Smitten Erik, Soul Bond, Space Opera, Telepathy, Temporary Character Death, The Void, Tiny Baby Telepaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:33:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garnettrees/pseuds/garnettrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"A new species is being born, Erik. Help me guide it, shape it… lead it."</i><br/>Despite the hundreds of years and endless wars that have passed, the G-d Emperor Magneto knows this was not how things were meant to be. The world he fought for was one that would compliment and protect the philosophers and the teachers-- men like Xavier.<br/>He was never meant to rule without Charles by his side.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(A somewhat hazy Dune-fusion, featuring an Erik who has fought too long and hard to turn down the ultimate temptation. Post X3, but you know <strike>Charles won't stay gone for long</strike>. _Finally_, in chapter five!)</p>
<p>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wow... it's been so long since I've really posted that I have serious performance anxiety. (Insert double entendre of your choice here. ^_~) It's... kinda been a crazy year. ^^; I swear I am still working on a lot of my stories, especially "Love Like Winter", and I am **very** psyched about DoFP. Hopefully that will help the ol' inspiration along.   
>  In the meantime, I've been sitting on this since about September, picking away at it every now and again. I'd watched _Children of Dune_ for all the obvious, McAvoy-centric reasons and... yeah, this is what happened. Not really a _Dune_ fusion, but it borrows some elements, and I'm sure you'll get the idea where this is headed. Chapter Two is waiting for a polish-up, but it does exist. As always, I would be ever so grateful if you could take the time to comment, or even just click the 'kudos'. Helps me not to be such a nervous, self-guessing bug. But I'm glad if you even just take the time to read!  
>  Tigger Warning(s): Canon Character Death (doesn't stick, I promise), dubious scientific ethics, mentions of genocide, depressed immortals, some space opera elements. Future references to sci-fi medical procedures, cloning, ect.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons, even death may die."  
-Abdul Al Alhazred (H.P. Lovecraft)

_"Love creates for itself a tension that disrupts every tense in time."_  
-Albertina Hoffman (Angela Carter)

* * * * * * * * *

_"A new species is being born, Erik. Help me guide it, shape it… lead it."_

In his heart of hearts, Erik Lehnsherr knows he never truly expected to last long after Charles' death. A part of him-- steeped in a black, ironic sentimentality he would have publicly denied-- had even been convinced they'd go _together_. Hadn't that always been their way? He and Charles were the most essential of opposites. The corona of void around a star; the shadow a candle cannot help but cast. The intensity of their personal affection had been forced to dance only on a thin, ephemeral horizon. That place children might look down at their feet and shadows, and wonder who had sewn them there. 

Integral, is the word. 

 

'A definition of certain limits, or lack there of'-- at least, that's the meaning of the mathematical term. Erik has always had a weakness for disciplines that _quantify_. Science will always leave him cold

_(thank you, Herr Doktor. you and all your damned disciples)_

but, oh! Mathematics is form, solidity. 'We're all just one meal away from barbarism', he used to tell Charles, who was so learned and lovely, possessed of such faith in the trappings of civilization. One bullet, one pejorative, one witch hunt away from the whole sorry mess unraveling. Borders changed-- they could be rewritten overnight, Erik knew. But one and one would always equal two.

_('No matter what side of the Universe you're on,' Logan often adds. These days, he is forever bent on being unhelpful.)_

 

Charles should be present here, with Erik, in the godless and inconceivable **NOW**. They fought _together_ ; side by side and in opposition. Back-to-back against the world; too combative as lovers, too tender as enemies. Even when they failed, they did it together.  
And how spectacularly.

 

The being that has become known as the God-Emperor Magneto has led many lives, and thus had many deaths to go with them. The death of the boy, the moment his mother's bright consciousness was snuffed out. The death of his… _ _humanity_ _

_(interesting choice of words, there)_

at the hands of Schmidt. The father perished in the fire with that tiny, defenseless body; whatever was left of Erik died on a too-bright, nameless beach. Or so he'd thought then. Youthful arrogance, perhaps-- a tendency towards theatrics. (That, at least, has not diminished with time.) How, as sharp and untempered as he had been then, could he ever have anticipated the the thousand _little_ deaths? Acid dripping on steel; the smallest of cuts, washed to singing agony in salt water? 

_(Charles, gazing at him over the wasteland of a glass chessboard, in the unforgiving light of that plastic prison. The look in those eyes-- still vivid, yet lacking some vital warmth-- after Magneto had given his own traitorous orders in the Dark Cerebro, and then… walked away.)_

 

When the Phoenix tore Charles apart, dissolving that beloved body and all the intimate spaces between the veins, Erik had possessed only one thought beyond his grief.  
Soon. His own death would come soon.  
 _'Not long at all'._

Oh, he'd never believed in Heaven-- no spectral paradise or _'olam ha-ba_. Even if such a place existed, he never had any illusions about joining Charles there. At the time (thinking himself so old and wise!) he would not have been able to articulate his expectations. Not peace, certainly. 

_("Peace was never an option.")_

Not a continuation of consciousness, either. Rest, perhaps, is what he would call it now. The desire to be still, to _stop_. He'd been such a relentless fighter, then, that he probably would have found the notion insulting. _**Magneto**_ did not lay down arms, nor even the pitiful human Erik after that.

The Cure was temporary-- but it had still been a funeral knell. And, at some point (though Erik had been old, too easily bruised, and possessed of temperamental bowels), his many deaths stopped being metaphorical and stared being quite literal.

 

 

How well he remembers the so-called Cure, and all its frantic antecedents! The Legacy virus, which finally warped and turned on its own all-to-human creators. The Fuel Wars; an exploitation of planets and energy sources that drove many extra-terrestrial races to quit this dimension all together. Second Mutant Conflict, the Sentinel rebellion and the extinction of humanity that followed. Lehnsherr's original 'handlers' swore he'd never been 'fully dead'

_(and really, what kind of terminology is _that_?)_

but he was dubious then, and is outright incredulous now. The scientists cannot not be made to answer, not now at any rate. They are centuries dead, having partaken of a luxury Erik is continually denied. Those hated ink numbers, however-- those persist to this day. Oh, but the arm that bears them is again (and shall henceforth always be) that of a young adult male. 

_(The body he's been given is, in the very height of cruelty, just about the same age as when he originally met Charles.)_

It sickens Lehnsherr that he must still be defiled so, but he suspects he knows why _they_ did this. If his arm were bare then he would _know_ that he is a made thing, and not the real Erik at all. 

With proof like that, there would be nothing left but to tear himself apart.

 

Is it doubt that keeps him alive? Initially, perhaps. That and, he supposes, the damned _hope_ Charles was not kind enough to take with him when he departed life. Duplication, regeneration, resurrection-- in the end, it's all the same. Erik had awoken in this new body to find himself enslaved once more, in full circle. 

The humans, and their Sentinel servants, said, 'We will fight mutants _with_ mutants.' What they never learned, never seemed to understand, was that any shackled beast would eventually slip free of its yolk. 

The humans had sown poison in too many fields. When the mutants withdrew, concerned with their own survival, man and machine carried out a crusade against one another with hatred unparalleled. The Sentinels despised the imperfect organics that considered themselves masters; the humans loathed that mere _machines_ would dare imagine themselves greater, or even equal to. 

In only a handful of years-- less time than any of the Mutant conflicts-- they had destroyed one another.

_Homo superior_ was, with a few notable exceptions, alone in the Milky Way.

 

Erik Lehnsherr-- or this echo that calls itself such-- guides the remnants of his kind on a planet that could never have been seen from Earth. (Though Earth, and everything Erik knows from his truer lives, is just a smoldering reference point now.) He is not the only shard of temporal driftwood to wash up on this distant shore. There are other faces, ones he knows. 'Friend' and 'foe' have become obsolete terms. How can such labels stand, against the full and crushing weight of time? They are bound together now, pathetically grateful to see someone else from that first life they knew.

Logan has never quite managed to shake his regenerative gifts. He's been watching those he loves perish since before Erik was born, and still death just refuses to stick. The only thing guaranteed to outlast him is his adamantium skeleton, and there's little comfort to be had there.

Then there's Mystique, whose genes once so beguiled a young biophysicist. She is still youthful and strong; her masks might age, but she does not. (Only her grudges are stronger-- she will never quite forgive Erik for leaving her, shivering and bare on the prison transport floor.) 

Beast completes their meager company. Hank, who so foolishly played his own variation on Raven's genetic theme. Erik can not picture the scientist's former fleshy, human face no matter how hard he tries. Sometimes, he catches those leonine eyes watching him from behind antique frames, and wonders if McCoy has forgotten his 'real' name. Of course, the other mutant may wonder the same thing about Erik-- and neither one of them will ever ask. 

 

So very much has left him-- the names of places, the images of of the amnion he so-briefly called home, and of all the places that were not home. He remembers Schmidt

_(you had another name once, Doktor, but I have forgotten that, too)_

for all his bloody crimes, as a thing that happened, not as a man at all. 

_(I am free, of your face and of your voice. There are scars and numbers on my body, but the hand that wrote is gone, gone, gone.  
You wanted me dead-- all of _us_ dead._

_You are dust… and here I am.)_

 

He remembers that he once had a wife, can picture the fall of her hair and perhaps summon the ghost of her laugh, but he has forgotten what she was called. His children are in bits and pieces.

_(Pietro's shock of white hair; how little Anya fit against his chest.  
Wanda, his dark star-- so brilliantly red it burned.)_

He'd come to Charles' home before it was a school, but where had that been? There were cold winters there, not that he'd stayed to experience them. He knows his powers were lost on an island (or was it a prison?)-- he'd found them again on a bridge he cannot picture, but somehow knows was made of gold. 

He remembers his mother by sheer force of will.

 

With all that has fallen away-- washed clear by anesthesia, sliced away by scalpels, blasted by the cold-furnace heat of Time-- why has he not been granted any true reprieve?Charles, damn him, is as vivid as ever. Charles comes as easily as breathing. Not the pain of a phantom limb, but everyday the agony of fresh amputation. This pain has been slowly consuming Erik since he woke in this new, young flesh.  
He is a thing reinvented by his suffering.

 

_(He cannot stand it. It is too much, even for him, to bear. If it ever stops, he _will_ destroy himself, having at last incontrovertible evidence that this construction is not Erik Lehnsherr at all.)_

 

Mutantkind exists in a type of perpetual exile. They had never been welcome amongst the nations of Earth, or even on the pitiful coral-and-bedrock island they were allotted. Astroid M was but a way-station, and now they have transplanted themselves here. Genosha-- a planet named for a dream that withered on the vine. Erik does not begrudge them these mythologies, though he sometimes wishes that he could. These mutants (population arduously rebuilt from only a few thousand survivors) look to their Elders for guidance, to provide safety and philosophical architecture. The Four who remain give, as much as they are able.  
And as much as their ancient apathy will allow.

 

Once, Charles promised Erik that they would lead their new species. Shape it together. 

_(And didn't we, liebling? From opposite ends, and from a common heart we forgot how to acknowledge. I might have been their defender, but you were their teacher, their compass towards 'right' when 'might' could have easily held sway. They are as much yours-- if not more so-- than they are mine.)_

_For so long, he'd fought for a haven he'd never truly expected to enjoy. Fought for a world worthy of people like Charles._

__(There is no one _like_ Charles)__

_Erik never imagined he would be doing this alone._

_._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is there ever enough crazy/besotted/desperately-in-love-not-giving-a-damn-about-the-consquences Erik? I thought not. ^_^;;;;
> 
> Any and all thoughts, comments, kudos, and/or extra Duncan Idahos most gratefully welcome. <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been trying to get this tied up since I first saw DoFP (opening night-- whooohooo!). It's finally to a point where I'm not terrified to post it. Some elements of Logan's pre-fix future are in place (though in the far past, 'cause this is Space Opera ^^'), but there are no actually DoPF spoilers in the story itself. (There are a few in the end notes, so take appropriate care. ^_~)
> 
> Trigger Warnings:: Off-screen hunting and skinning of animals (see end notes). Religious references. Canon Character Death (doesn't stick, I promise), dubious scientific ethics, mentions of genocide.
> 
> Additional ~~Enticements~~ Warnings: Bizarre futurism. Blending/mushing of various Marvel timelines. Crazy/besotted/desperately-in-love-not-giving-a-damn-about-the-consquences Erik.
> 
> .

The G-d Emperor Magneto wakes, as always, with every breath and muscle held _in potentia_. In all his many lives -- and deaths-- he has never known any other way; no slow progression to drift up from sleep, but instant and merciless awareness. 

( _"You never rest, darling,"_ Charles had told him often enough, _"even when you're asleep."_ This, of course, had been in the days when they could share a bed as well as make it a battleground. Mystique, bless her wanton bluntness, had a much more specific complaint; _"Never mind putting clothes on the tiger,"_ \-- this with a roll of her own leonine eyes -- _"try bedding it."_ )

 

Laying utterly still on the stone slab he has taken for a bed, Erik allows himself a deprecating half-laugh, and turns his head to take in the spectacular, sheer drop that awaits less than three paces from his repose. Harsh arctic wind, utterly foreign in tone and cadence, howls impotently past the small alcove he has carved for himself. Dim and discomforting as light from an oily candle, First Sunrise smears everything in faint colors of rust. The G-d Emperor sits up in the scant room he has allowed himself; he aligns the toes of his boots with the edge of the drop and spends a good while thinking about the many stories down. The view is at once expansive and spartan. Nothing but snow and rock-dotted tundra-- the kind of merciless terrain that breaks a farmer's heart. There are no beings like himself for miles in any direction-- he can sense it in every inch of the canyons and crevasses expanding far out of physical sight.

He has come to take refuge in that ferocious solitude. Animal simplicity-- the rippling, feline sort of predation that is by now second nature to him. Perhaps it is even innate, even in this young and questionable body; written into those helix strands Xavier so loved. He has never been self-conscious, or self-observant. Artifice is not his gift. His actions themselves may be strategic, but the impetus behind them is always honest bone and charred emotion.  
Usually rage.

 

This anger (his only true constant companion) is more often than not banked to embers, these days, but it is as much a part of him as heart or lungs and can therefore never be extinguished. After these many long centuries, Erik much prefers to linger over the lighter memories of his 'mortal' life. One might say he should have, at the time, made an effort more conducive to good remembrances-- but only if they wished to dare his temper again.

( _"There is so much more to you--"_ )  
"It is far too early, _liebling_ ," Erik replies aloud, tone equal amounts careless impatience and affection. It is, after all, only an echo. A recording, made on jumpy and color-limited film. 

 

He can feel a fond, inward smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. By now, its an impulse that's easy to ignore, if only because he isn't always so fortunate as to remain unwatched by keen and also-predatory eyes. His own gaze, the green-gray of storm, is fixed on a sky of such tarnished vermillion it leaves room for the brief comfort of being anything other than utterly alien. Not Old Earth in her guises bucolic or war-torn or polluted, but the Cold Wastes of the planet Genosha. The Royal Houses and various sycophants have the nerve to call this world Muntantkind's First Home though there was, of course, a Genosha long before. The citizenry is forever tacking the fraying, time-worn names of legend on things which hold little or no resemblance. Erik gives a small, disgusted flick of his heavy cape as he rises. The land _here_ has no need for a name, and would stand in stark defiance if one were given. It is good to wander; to be away from the company of a generation of mutants who have no memory of clear blue and white clouds, of waters in their breath-taking expanse, or a moon in their evening sky.

 

Lehnsherr contemplates the drop in front of him. It's just a step off into nothing. He could let himself plummet, reigning in his power only at the last moment, but why bother? By now, his body has completely forgotten the in-born fear of falling. He wouldn't even have the pleasure of an adrenaline rush, too acutely aware of the preponderance of ferric-- if unnamed-- ore around him.  
'Like riding a bicycle,' he thinks dully, though it's not much more than a collection of words. A bicycle was some type of conveyance, he's sure. Most probably not living.

He ponders this as he slowly drifts against the chill air, lowering himself with the same leisurely pace as a man descending the stairs after a solid night's sleep. His eyes scan for the horizon, looking for any sign of movement.  
Of prey.

* * *

There are days when it seems impossible to Erik that he still retains these memories, never mind their continued potency. Then again, he never knew a soul more determined than Charles. His _schatz_ \-- his patron saint of lost causes. Surely, surely, he has forgotten much more than he still recalls. But how can one take inventory of what is lost? The Beast claims the brains of _homo sapiens_ (and thereby _homo superior_ ) contain an average of one hundred trillion synapses*, and so must have enough storage space to retain every experience no matter the length of life. An entire legion of Sentinels, he says, couldn't replicate five minutes of genuine sapient thought. The whole premise seems a bit of a stumbling block for Hank; he'll go on about it at length until he remembers just who it is he's lecturing to. It's the access that's questionable-- golden eyes will peer at Magneto past ancient wire rims, and for a moment the G-d Emperor will see instead the pinkish vulnerability of youth. But if, _if_ that access could be achieved…

'For the love of creation, _why_?' Erik has asked, careless of Hank's many disciples he might startle with his strident voice. Supposedly, they're being trained to carry on the noble torch of Science-- to Lehnsherr, they look more like sheepish, scurrying monks. 

 

He and Hank have this pseudo-argument with enough regularity that the last question is usually a signal for Beast to kick him out. An end to the interview. Magneto always leaves disgruntled, having paid twice in irritation for whatever little technological or legislative trifle he needed the hairy scholar for to begin with. It's just as well, though, to be reassured. As long as they're arguing about it, he knows that Hank (and he still, very secretly, thinks first of the young and bashful man who was so briefly in his charge) has not succeeded. It would be ill-advised to let him inflict such a thing on himself, or anyone else; downright irresponsible. 

But tempting. Tempting as the red curve of a forgotten fruit in a forgotten garden.

 

On Old Earth, Erik remembers it had been common to say that anything dear 'didn't grow on trees', but apparently knowledge did.

 

_(You know that's only an allegory, right?_

_Yes. No. It amuses me to think of things this way-- it must be myth, because personal histories are manipulated for their own ends. There was a Cold War that was hot to the touch. This tree grew knowledge and they ate of it, my mother said. There where stars of many colors, and of different points. Red, spangled blue, gold. In the end, poisonous mushrooms blazed brighter than the sun, and blotted out the sky.  
Soldiers burned bodies, and sifted afterwards in the ash for gold.)_

 

Lehnsherr could tell Hank a few things about his precious library, if he thought it would do any good. If he thought he would believed. All those stoic little devotees-- warrior-monks illuminating manuscripts, splitting atoms and conducting eighth grade lab experiments all at the same time. Knowledge for knowledge's sake, hah! _Secrets_ are the offspring of knowledge, Erik is sure. As soon as you know something, you have the choice: pass it on, or hide it. When you keep secrets, they start keeping you, like chains that reach from within to limit you without. Magneto is a connoisseur of incarceration, but he's never come across a prison quite like the one he's built for himself.

 

The wilderness is a wonderful place in gloat over a secret, the G-d Emperor thinks presently. He places his boots firmly on the ground (he refuses to call it 'earth'), as gracefully as if he'd never been stripped of his powers at all. He's still not an intimate of Genosha's unique electro-magnetic fields, but his control is perfect. He doesn't spare a glance back as he smooths the shimmering rock back over where his enclave had been, leaving unassuming cliff-face in its stead. One must sleep up out of the way of other inhabitants, in the Wastes. The helmet-- his 'crown'-- is easily called to his still-gloved hand, though he doesn't bother with it just yet. That's another secret for, in New Muir, he is absolutely never seen without it. It would be indecent-- like tugging on superman's cape. Or whatever that nonsense used to mean.

 

In the end, though, Magneto's greatest secret is almost laughably simple. Though his own subjects project more and more of a facade upon him-- though these falsehoods hum along an already strong cord of fear that he is not really the being he believes himself to be-- he defines himself more and more by the name he once disowned.

 

(A warm voice in a cold ocean; concern to soothe while victory slipped away:  
 _ **"Erik."** )_

 

"Yes," he whispers. He will answer to his own name here, even if he has only ghosts to call him that. It is one of the few luxuries which he allows himself. The great, barren tundra is, to him, more opulent than a thousand palaces constructed to tempt a king. 

( _"Erik,"_ says Charles' ghost, who comes and goes whether  
\--always--  
he is wanted or not.)

Lehnsherr's little indulgences come with a risk (madness-- that is, more of it), and so he is sure Charles is not offended if he doesn't always answer. It would never do to actually slip in public.

 

The thick, iron-grey clouds of day are rolling in, muting the pinkish cast of Second Sunrise almost before it begins. Erik stretches sinuously, before heading off for morning inspection. He's built the rest of his encampment in the box canyon, having no fear of being cornered by anything as mundane as topography. Surprisingly enough, the area is just as he left it the night before. The fire pit is ready to be stirred, taking only a brief flash of flint to become a healthy glow once more. He uses it to warm the jerky he's already made, idly toying with the idea of drying the meat from his latest kill. The cuts are far larger than anything else he's had this trip-- he stretched the hides out yesterday afternoon-- but will not keep for much longer even in the chilly, iced crevice he's made for them. If he returns to the fortress tomorrow, he can carry them back as they are. If he stays longer (and he should very much like to stay longer), it makes more sense to dry them and lessen the weight. 

Meager breakfast chased down with a handful of snow, Erik wraps his thick fur cape more firmly around himself, and stalks off to examine the hides. Genosha's mineral content is far more diverse than her limited natural biosphere, and of that small number even fewer species can survive this far North. The great Boar-Lynx is his most common quarry, having earned his special fondness by being vicious, difficult, and having actually taken a small chunk out of him a time or two. 

_('You are at times hopelessly enamored with long odds,' his inner echo of Charles will chide lightly. Erik hears him best in the open and isolating landscapes, under a pearl grey sky without pity or stars or twin suns to place him in the context of time.)_

The size of bears, these lynx-creatures are never the less possessed of long bones and a thin feline grace-- it is their sharp, battering tusks that earn them the 'boar' portion of their moniker. For months at a time, Erik leaves his fortress-sanctuary to hunt, skin, and brood in makeshift shelters. He never kills more than he needs, as food is still very much a consideration for him, and he always makes use of pelt. The bones have no real draw, but it is his understanding that the Wolverine finds the material serviceable for hilts and even scabbards. On the rare occasions he is forced into the city, Erik leaves them in obnoxiously-placed piles near the other Elder's barracks. This-- the gift of bones, Logan's obvious use of them, as well as the burly man's occasional willingness to deflect attention from Erik-- is the only grudging gesture the two of them have ever made towards peace.

 

He'll have much more for Logan than last time, Erik thinks with no small hint of satisfaction. The packs (prides? droves?) of beasts, especially the ones in this area, seem to be adapting to their new niche below Erik in the food chain. His previous trip, during the partial thaw, would have been disastrous if hunting were actually his only goal. A number of alpha boars had raided his camp in the dark, with more stealth then he would have given them credit for. They tore the pelts to shreds, and ate the butchered remains of their kin out of spite. One would almost think his quarry had accumulated enough memory to hunt him back. 

This time, the racks are unmolested as well, as are the razor-thin trip-wires he set about the perimeter. He is pleased to see that the dim light of Second Sunset did not impair the thoroughness of his fleshing. Every inch of his make-shift workspace is as still an clean as he left it.  
Perhaps that's a little disappointing, too, Erik admits to himself as he begins untacking the hides to turn them. A loss of hides and kills would certainly justify an extension of his 'spiritual retreat'.

 

No matter what these excursions are called, they have the added benefit of sending certain overly-interested guild masters, house-heads and courtiers into disarray. Nation-building is by no means the same as a military campaign, but the responsibilities of leadership are similar. Erik has lead armies before-- never mind the time he spent in the trenches during the Sentinel Wars and Second Mutant Conflict. All the same, he has never before had so many people presume to bother with _his_ affairs. 

 

It didn't take any of the reluctant 'Four Elders' long to see the snare being set for them. The group of mutants fleeing Old Earth had been ragged, ill-prepared, and desperate in the extreme. They needed cohesion during their exodus, and a foundation when they at last found a suitable planet safely distant from those _things_ which still crawled in the ruins of Sol's third satellite. The people want symbols; not just four experienced leaders or advisors but something larger than life… commanding respect and loyalty as only myths can.

The Genoshans are as free with their adoration as they are with their demands. If they had their way, Mystique would be worshiped as a priestess, the Beast would be a scholarly oracle, and Erik would be more a slave than a king.  
 _(For well he knows, having loved as he has, that any idol is at the mercy of its worshiper.)_  
Isn't it enough that they shoulder these titles at times? 

 

Only the Wolverine is foolish enough to make his home amongst their young citizenry. Most of the time, Erik is certain the soldier does this not out of stupidity (though he's never been lacking in that), but simply to ensure that he has something to _do_. Troops to drill and marshall; an endless supply of sparing partners with the most exotic of inbuilt defenses. Mystique is rarely found in her true form-- who knows where she goes, and whose face she wears while she wanders? The Beast is a recluse, having fled to the planet's southern extremes with his creche of acolytes, trying to resurrect the god Science from the ruins of war's technologies. He spends his days teaching, much as he once did-- drilling on the scientific method and the importance of alternatives to Artificial Intelligence. Genosha's woefully small salvage fleet brings in scraps of ancient, battered vessels-- mutant, human, and otherwise-- for Hank to research, compile and tinker with. Erik has not seen the other mutant away from his isolated monastery-settlement since the first pillars were raised. 

 

Erik smiles derisively, seeing himself for a moment as a stranger would from afar. An unwilling king, perhaps, and a hunter with all certainty. But also a man killing time, _serving_ time has he has never bent to serve any other. They cannot die-- not a single one of them. Mystique and Hank are bound by whatever caprice of genetics birthed her polymorphism, Logan is damned much the same by his own regenerative powers. And Lehnsherr himself is… well. He pauses, standing between two the hide-frames for a moment as he fights the urge to ruck up the left cuff of his body-suit. The numbers there will never be reassuring-- they will never be anything other than _hideous_ , a gangrene he has carried with him from one end of the galaxy to another.  
All the same, they provide context. 

( _'And context is everything.'_ says Charles, an urgent whisper. Some long ago argument, no doubt.)

 

He _is_ Erik Lehnsherr. He must be. If he were not (were merely a replica, a hateful voice whispers) then surely these memories would not weigh upon him so; the endlessly similar years and wars and sufferances would not have resulted in these enraged boredom? This helpless-- and he laughs, because it is a very 'Charles' word-- _ennui_. 

"'Picture a man going on a journey…'" the metal-bender mutters. It's another echo, a bit of cultural debris. Hell if he knows-- or cares-- what it means. 

 

_(And why can he remember that, something so trivial as to resemble gaudy rubbish strew about in ash? Little bits of slogans, novels, the drill song child-soldiers sang on Europa colony. Wasteful, but innocuous. There is, of course, much worse._

_**\-- You abandoned me, Erik. You took everything I loved. --**_

_**\-- Find the humans. Find all of them. Goodbye, Charles. --**_

_**\-- If you *ever* loved me, then you will leave me be!--**_

_Why can he remember the pin-prick of the Cure-bullet, or his mother helping him work sums on leftover butcher's paper, and not facts no doubt more usefully firm and empirical? He cannot remember the name of the city he was born in, or the name of the island-nation whose accent so colored Charles' voice. He does not recall the name of the first man he killed, though he very much remembers _why_. There seems to him no rhyme or reason, no weight system-- save in Charles' case-- to determine why one piece of data should strike in him indelibly and another should vanish without a sigh._

_Charles-- with his literary leanings and penchant for stylized narrative-- would have at least been equipped to appreciate this. Because Erik most of all remembers the things he'd sell his soul to forget.)_

 

With his arm full of pelts, Erik moves along the rocky landscape toward the faint sound-and-sense of running water. He will need to find a cool, dry place in which he can store the pelts, and he seems to remember having carved a useful little vestibule not far downstream. After that, he will smoke and dry the cuts of meat for jerky-- he has no intention of returning to the glittering din and charade of the Court and those who might wish to inflict themselves upon him until he absolutely must. That's the point of these journeys, to lose himself in the simple, driving needs of survival.  
To just. Stop. Thinking. 

"For just a little while," he whispers, running a free hand along the grain of the fur. "That's all."

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary and/or Notes:  
> [+] _schatz_ \-- German; 'treasure'.  
> [+] _liebling_ \-- German; 'darling, beloved'.  
> *'Picture a man going on a journey beyond sight and sound'-- misquote of Twilight Zone from Good Morning Vietnam (1987)  
> *from Michio Kaku's Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (Anchor Books, 1997)
> 
>  
> 
> I realize it may seem odd to some that Erik is hunting. I have a couple of reasons for this: A) in leading the Brotherhood, Erik proved he was excellent at utilizing very scant resources-- I can't imagine he would never have learned to obtain food in some of their more out-of-the-way bases. B) Judaism does not approve of hunting for sport; hunting and trapping for necessity is absolutely okay, as long as the kill is not overly cruel (I completely realize that 'cruel' is a subjective term). So, on a still growing colony with a limited biosphere and a population with diverse needs… I'm thinking he's doing something useful. C) Erik used to hunt _people_ \-- namely, war criminals. D) He's a bored Immortal. If he weren't doing something semi-constructive, he might start dropping stadiums on people. ^_~
> 
>  
> 
> As always, if you would be so kind as to leave any kudos, comments, hits, random strapping young Letos and/or Spice Worms, I would be very much in your debt. <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! After a long, involuntary (and very evil RL-related) break from fandom, I've actually been able to write! I've been really eager to get to Charles' triumphant return in this story, but the plot seems to have metastasized a bit. ^^; As it is, I already have the next chapter written (it's at the beta's now), and I can promise you we'll have him back by Chapter 5. In the meantime, Erik always has plenty of mangst, there's about five hundred years of mutant history to catch up on, and I promise something actually _does_ happen in this chapter.
> 
> Warnings for violent imagery, mentions of genocide, and some brief suicidal ideation. No animals (alien or terrestrial) were harmed in the making of this fic. ^_~
> 
> As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my story. If I could bother you just a bit longer to leave a comment, or just a 'kudo', I would be very grateful.

  


Morning in the wastelands that have no name. 

  


The barren landscape stretches from horizon to horizon, filled with its emptiness. Erik himself moves almost noiselessly, so that the ringing silence (almost a low type of music in and of itself) is broken only by the far cry of the boar-lynx, and the occasional gust of wind. With a mingled air of propriety and reluctance, the G-d Emperor finally dons his helmet. It weighs heavily on him, these days, and it will always be a necessity; all the same, it is disconcerting to realize that he no longer feels fit to be seen without it. A symbol, yes, and a defense against the less scrupulous of the telepathic Houses, but it would also be like going about naked in public. As Charles would have put it (after laughing at Erik, no doubt), it was simply _not a done thing_.

 

In spite of its two suns, daylight on Genosha-- particularly in the north-- is actually rather dim. The seemingly perpetual veil of thin gray clouds provide a merciful, if gloomy, shield against those self-same blazing orbs. The eons-old primary star (which Erik privately thinks of as _Shemesh_ , though he has no memory of why) is not that far past the prime of any main-sequence body, but it is far from ideal. The other-- which Erik calls _die kleine_ , and which the Beast has labeled a 'helium white dwarf'-- is apparently the composed of leftover matter in the system, and moves so rapidly around the shared center of gravity that it appears to be zipping rambunctiously about the alpha. Without the considerable amounts of dust, water vapor and other particulates in the upper atmosphere, this rock would not have been a candidate for settlement at all. Desperation, as Erik well knows, can make its home amidst any dusty corner or poisoned well. The handful of survivors from Asteroid M had been running out: of fuel, of sustenance, and even of parts to repair the very systems that provided oxygen. The prohibition against mechanized intelligence made the journey even more arduous but, by that time, the aversion to AI had reached an almost religious zeal amongst their kind. 

 

_(Lehnsherr himself can still hear the revolting discordance of screams and clashing, somehow-elastic armor that composed Trask's first unexpected demonstration. A marvel of modern science, indeed! The Sentinels had been unveiled at some arrogantly named 21st Century exhibition-- the sort of petty international muscle-flexing that annoyed Magneto to no end. His own target had not been Trask, but rather one of the Cure manufacturers desperately trying to ply their wares as some sort of regular supplement, rather than a final solution. Even he had not anticipated another assault while world governments were still reeling from the resurgence of the The Mutant Problem. Trask had turned his inventions on the very audience itself, slaughtering mutants wholesale amidst the churning crowd. The smell of charred flesh and burning hair summoned a raging despair within Erik, who felt memories press in on him with such immediacy that it was as if he were living two horrors at once._

_He fought, of course. He exercised his reemerging and somewhat atrophied powers to escape with his life and, more importantly, those of many others. A good number of them were children; many more had previously tried to normalize themselves, and now swung violently towards his cause._

_But Erik was old-- in body, then, if not to this great degree of exhaustion in spirit-- and even the most refined of strong drinks had not been able to wash the taste of oven-ash and hateful chocolate from his mouth.)_

 

The flight of mutants from Sol system had come more than five hundred years later, but it had been no less pressing. That Erik remains unmoved by this new Genosha is hardly remarkable. He has never felt a loyalty towards land, or the pull to call a place his own. He is tempted to say his own parents came from a kingdom called Diaspora, but knows his memory is far from reliable in most cases.

_(He knows, for example, that Charles' residence was merely a very large house, and not a castle-- but that is how it seems to him now, in his worn recollections. As close, if he is honest, as he has ever gotten to that mythical concept of 'home'.)_

This new mutant generation has a deep love of what is, to Erik, an utterly alien horizon. That is all very well, from a nation-building standpoint. The still lake and rocky banks of New Muir are a subject for their race's budding literary tradition, though it is sometimes hard to understand what exactly there is to rhapsodize about. 

 

Genosha will never be a 'romantic' planet. Its night sky is alive with stars and the pearlescent band of the Milky Way, but it has no moon. Consequently, the few bodies of liquid water lay quite still, and many of the dizzying geological structures were formed when the world was quite young. The rocky, mineral-rich soil is an excellent analogy for the new inhabitants: pragmatic yet somehow ostentatious, determined yet possessed of an oddly retiring aggression. The few native plants play disquieting elaborations on those standards remembered from Earth. There are trees with diaphanous white foliage, and thin crimson roots suggestive of veins. Berries grow in tenacious little bundles between boulders, fist-sized fruit gem-like in its ripe transparency. Deep, thick banks of moss grow in the lowlands near New Muir, where they glitter like fool's gold in the daylight. In this same way, the new mutant society has arranged itself in very original ways to accommodate its astonishing array of gifts, but Erik has seen an old stratification taking place almost from the moment of settlement. Mutants might be the 'better men', but they are far from flawless. Rage, greed, and lust for power stir within their hearts still, and it seems no amount of genetic evolution will ever breed it out. 

With an almost sour, self-effacing smile, Erik wonders if he would be able to concede this point to Charles, had his _neshama_ rightly lived to see the world he'd struggled towards. The G-d Emperor would like to think so, but he is more self-aware now than ever. Still stubborn and arrogant, as the more courageous of his minders is quick to point out. 

 

Since he doesn't have to answer to the nigh-on indomitable Emma-Leigh or the timidly compassionate Gene at the moment (or anyone else, for that matter), Magento takes a circuitous route towards his make-shift tanning cave. There are few landmarks in this nameless waste, but the metalokinetic has no need of them. He follows the veins of ore in the ground itself, and the mineral composition of particular outcroppings. Cold winds blow down out of the ultimate north, a glaciered polar region that gradually dims off in Erik's senses into a void like that of old, flat-Earth maps.  
"Here there be dragons," he mutters to himself ruefully. 

Hank has been toying with the idea of of an 'arctic' expedition, developing a number of theories from their scant shuttle-imaging, and noting that the tilt of Genosha's axis-- slightly less than that of Earth-- may yield interesting variations. Though he'd understood the severe time constraints, the Beast had been unable to refrain from pointing out the potential colony's short-comings. A thirty-eight hour day, lack of perceptible seasons, and thin range of vegetation had only been the beginning. In a thousand years or so (of course, McCoy's figure had been much more accurate) mutant kind would be forced to migrate again; this time to escape the maturing Red Giant of Genosha's primary sun. Generations of mutants will be born and buried in the interim. Erik himself may die, though he's not holding out much hope for that. The Beast has tested all four "Guardians", including himself, on genetic and molecular levels-- no amount of data yet amassed has yielded an answer. There isn't much to correlate anyway-- they all have the same 'symptoms' of immortality, but very different diseases. Of them all, only Hank has aged-- minutely, if perceptibly-- and they have known a long while that Mystique is immune to time only the way the stars are. That is, by sheer scope. Because his own case has the fewest answers, this has occasionally led to the utterly discomforting notion that Erik may someday exist amongst his mortal mutant citizens with only Wolverine for company. 

 

_('And yes,' whispers the tattered-and-stitched boy-child Lehnsherr still carries within. 'Fixate on that triviality. Better that than contemplate the notion that this torture may never end. The Bad Man, the doctor whose name we banished-- at least with him there was hope he might go to far and make the damage fatal. G-d, if there is such a creature, is far more cruel in his experiment. And He understands the concept of mercy about as well as He understands the importance of protecting mothers.'_ )

 

The G-d Emperor shudders, and knows his arrival at the little grotto to be well-timed. He doesn't want to think about any of this. He forces it from his mind (or, perhaps, deeper _into_ his mind) as he crosses the stream. Up current a small ways, a waterfall is formed by some hidden glacier spring. The cave is cool, heavy in ores that sing, and the pelts are a firm weight in his arms. 

He gets to work. After all, lifetimes of imprisonment have taught him that there's nothing like work and aching muscle to banish conscious thought.

  


  


[ * * * * * * ]

  
When they come upon him-- much to Erik's later chagrin-- he is atypically unprepared. The morning's chores had been tedious, but ultimately successful. The hides are now drying properly in the back of the cave. He's checked the meat (stored in the front, wrapped in terraplast and kept cold under the steady waterfall) and taken the older cuts with him to dry for jerky. He's not far downstream when it does happen, just skirting the bank near where a great slab of glacier juts out over the bare tundra. Deep in that comforting, meditative thought that comes from making very prosaic plans, Lehnsherr has only a few seconds during the boar-lynx's throbbing battle-cry in which to take any warning. Turning rapidly, he scans his immediate surroundings and the horizon, but there is nothing to be gleaned sight or metal-sense. In the next instant, a powerful boar-lynx is leaping down upon him from the glacier overhang. The frozen snow-- having disguised the boar's approach-- is not equal to supporting the added pressure of the pounce, and the precipice collapses atop both Erik and his new foe. Three more bucks leap (or half-fall) from the glacier's height, their continuous growls sounding as deep and potent as giant, thunder-filled drums.

The avalanche blankets both mutant Emperor and the boar-pack's leader, a silent white cacophony of ice and snow. Erik fights his way out from under the not inconsiderable weight, very glad the collapsing section was not larger. He very carefully heats the helmet, just enough to help ease his escape. In another minute, he bursts free from the snowy rubble with a great gasp for air not unlike that of a man lost at sea. His grateful inhale is suddenly reversed into an involuntary grunt as wave of sharp, excruciating pain rakes upwards against the back of his neck. The helmet comes free under the force of the boar's swipe, tumbling down the snow bank even as Lehnsherr strikes out half-blindly at his attacker. He catches the creature near its jaw, just enough to make it rear back and give him room to maneuver. Its tusks are dripping with Magneto's blood.

 

Erik only manages to roll half way. The alpha has somehow freed itself from the snow as well, heaving its great jaguar-like forepaws squarely down on the mutant's chest. This male is easily twice as large as the rest of its pack, with one tusk chipped far shorter than the other in some battle long ago. The claw on the back of its single, vestigial toe cuts mercilessly through the crisp, tunic jacket that has always been one of Magneto's hallmarks. Though this one is made of cold-resistant durafiber, the talon still penetrates with the ease of a hot knife. It stings even past the initial penetration into flesh, digging under his ribs like a fishing hook. Erik goes slack, knowing full well that any tension will cause further damage to muscle and tendon. 

There is nothing to stop him from flexing his powers, though. The section of glacier may have (quite cleverly) hidden his attackers approach, but there is still plenty of ferric rock at his disposal. He fells one of the younger bucks immediately, pulling free a blade-like shard of basalt and lancing it through the boar's head without a single physical movement. The other two rear back in terror, looking for other adversaries, but the alpha remains unfazed. In its small, incongruously pink eyes, Erik can see an instinctive rage and animal cunning, driven by the faintest beginnings of sapient thought. The boar-lynx _had_ begun hunting him in return-- or, at least, _this_ one had. It makes a fetid barking noise in the mutant's face, as if calling upon the others to attend. They do, but not before Erik yanks viciously on a vein of ore only a few inches beneath the surface of a boulder. Its small, and the rest of the magnetically inert rock presents a dead weight, but he maintains his tenuous grip long enough to send it crashing down directly atop another of his foes. 

In retribution, the leader yanks up one paw, still holding Lehnsherr down with its sinewy weight. The single talon doesn't take much with it when it pulls free, though it slices flesh impressively. Clearly, it is meant for opening the carcass-- it's the tusks the creatures use for the actual rending of meat. He doesn't cry out, though he cannot help but gasp at the pain. As he does so, the boar brings its curled paw down again for what amounts to a sucker-punch-- of almost concussive force. 

 

Stubbornly, the Emperor maintains consciousness, though he is forced to release his magnetic hold on two other projectiles. His vision takes on a dark, mouldering yellow cast-- the color of sickness, if ever such a thing could be seen. Since the heralding of his second (and quite protracted) youth, Lehnsherr has had more than one brush with mortality. He'd spent decades in the trenches, for he'd had the dubious honor of being one of the few Omega-level mutants the Stryker/Trask conglomerate had managed to harness. Fire-fights, plasma bombs, radiation (to say nothing of a Sentinel's arsenal)-- he'd had all of that thrown at him, and more. On Callisto, he'd been in the blast radius of a hadron bomb, escaping with severe injuries only because the child-soldier at his side swept him away with the wind at her command. He'd tried so hard not to… become involved. Though they fought together for months, he'd never known her real name. It was only when he saw her smoking husk that he realized he'd been privately thinking of her as 'Anya'. 

 

The Ceres-Pallas slaughter, the bombing of New Vegas. Diseases both natural and engineered, famine, exposure, and acid raids to name just a few. Yet Magneto had survived. At least he thought

_(thought strongly, made belief fact, stubbornly refused to pray)_

as much. Those bastard scientists had never been very forthcoming, but there had been plenty of molecular healing technology available at the time. Available only to the elite, star-chamber humans of course… and "investment assets".

_(Ah,_ kleiner Erik Lehnsherr _… its all fear and anger, don't you see? you are a weapon.)_

Erik was part of the arsenal, just the same as always. They would heal him again and again, not out of compassion (for no longer was there even the pretense of medical aid on the battlefield), but because he was _useful_. 

 

Presently, the alpha boar breathes a hot, vicious growl in the Emperor's face, as if sensing this barest moment of inattention. Its pink eyes glitter-- almost aqueous, like some juicy Old Earth fruit. It wants to kill Magneto, but it will do so slowly. Whatever its level of intelligence, it is definitely sentient enough to want revenge. This would be a phenomenally stupid way to die, Erik chastises himself. Already, he is fumbling for new weapons with every ounce of his metal-sense. Smaller objects are easier to 'grip' past the throbbing yellow in his head: he pelts both his remaining enemies with iron pebbles, moving them with far more force and speed than conventional bullets. The leader actually takes the brunt of the stony hail, but he is old and tenacious. Lehnsherr has more luck with the younger one, embedding a bit of shrapnel close to its heart. It feels like a monumental effort, but a small fission of electromagnetic charge sends the beast crashing to the ground, breath and pulse no more. 

No roar from the alpha this time. Instead, it dips its remaining tusk just enough to slice a thin cut into Magneto's cheek.  
'Just me and thee,' Erik thinks at it, unwilling to waste the effort of speaking aloud. There's no question in his mind that he will prevail, but there is just the slightest flicker of something else. A deft little ripple, moving from the depths to the forefront of his mind-- less than a heartbeat, and more than a void between moments. 

 

He is so _tired_. Tired beyond aching bones and the endless cacophony of battles remembered in nightmare. Exhausted beyond the cold, the hunger, and the imprint of barbed wire that _never quite. fucking. leaves._

_(There is no Olam Ha-Ba. There would only be _nothing_; all of it, everything, my very self would _stop_. I dishonor no one's untimely death, betray no vow, and there is no G-d to hold me accountable.  
 **Charles** …)_

Then, like the barest prickle of flesh, the temptation is gone. Self-annihilation, even via negligence, is simply not a part of Magneto's being. Within him there is a singularity-- burning iron winter and the divine-furnace will to contradict. To live because others have judged him deserving to die; to fight because others have thought him powerless; to take anger over tenderness because, while love is fragile and fleeting, revenge is forever. Like the dead themselves. This is the merciless whip-hand (his own!) pursuing him through lifetimes of horror, and which will drive him to face the grotesqueries of the future, every battle to come. 

Magneto is not particularly aware of these bare facts of his existence on a conscious level. If he were to be presented with them as blandly as he so often presents the truth, he would undoubtably go mad. Only one man has ever truly seen and understood the core of Erik Lehnsherr; a teacher with the gentleness of true strength, who said he did not want the same things then proceeded to stay and care anyway. He is gone, and Erik is no more capable of realizing what Xavier saw in him than any being is capable of vomiting up their own soul.

 

Scarcely a moment has passed in real-time. In fact, the Emperor is still exhaling the same breath during which the brief temptation came to him. Up to this point, he's kept his physical body deceptively still and lax. Now, he surges upward against the boar's oppressive weight. The creature is too powerful to be bucked off, but the movement definitely catches it off guard. It did not escape the earlier hail unscathed, either; it's taken quite a bit of shrapnel, though nothing vital was hit. At least, not at the time. Calculating, Magento takes hold of every ferric object lodged in the his foe's flesh, sending them scattering outwards in every direction. As the alpha recoils in pain, Erik rears up and thrusts the whole of his powerfully muscled form to push the creature off. Locked in combat, they tumble down the mound of avalanche debris and onto the barren tundra rock. The mutant's head takes another impact from a shard of ice and the remaining claw in his gut jars with hot pain, but he manages to land on top. Taking the great boar's throat in his two bare hands, Lehnsherr squeezes with every bit of his will and no shortage of well-mulled, thwarted rage. His thumbs press inward, crushing the esophagus even as the alpha stares at him with hateful, not-quite stupidity. 

Finally, it thrashes once and breathes no more, those pink eyes sightless and dull. Releasing his strangle-hold, the G-d Emperor props himself up on one hand, using the other to gingerly extract the claw lodged in his belly. He is already taking mental stock of the few emergency provisions back at his camp. The wound is, somewhat miraculously, still relatively small, but it is bleeding more than he would like. Dragging himself off the body of his prey, Magneto rolls on his back, looking up at the murky quartz sky as the various chemicals and hormones excited by battle slowly begin to dissipate. He draws in deep, painful lungfuls of air, the clock-work thunder of his heartbeat growing more sedate with each exhale. 

 

It is then that the nameless canyon in the nameless waste echoes with a round of polite, restrained applause. 

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary and/or Notes:  
> [+] _Shemesh_ \-- masculine Hebrew term for sun, as used in the time of the Torah. (The feminine, poetic form is Chammah.)  
> [+] _die kleine_ \- German. "The little one'". 
> 
> -Unlike more common white dwarves (carbon), which are left in the wake of supernovae, helium white dwarfs are thought to be formed from excess matter following the birth of the primary star. Yes, I will shut up soon. ^_~''
> 
> But before I do, I also have to recommend the brilliant [All the Rest is Rust and Stardust](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1950816/chapters/4217832) by **spicedpiano** and **tahariel** , which has gotten me through many a gloomy day, and **luninosity** 's [… and this compromise](), which is my go-to comfort fic. ;-) Nothing is more inspiring than new, perceptive, and talented ways of looking at the Charles/Erik pairing. I love this fandom. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter-- not sure if I should apologize or not, since it is kind of plotty. 'Plans within plans', as Irulan would say. (There is some light pr0n, though. I will warn you that some of it is X2-ish era.) I definitely apologize for the necessary OC's. I promise they only appear as much as is needed to advance the plot, and that Erik will be interacting with his fellow guardians in the next chapter.
> 
> As always, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to read my story. If I could trouble you a little more for your thoughts or even a 'kudos', I'd be very much obliged. ;-)

Beyond the redoubling effort of his pulse, Erik vaguely registers a scandalized gasp accompanying the light clapping, but it is of no concern. He is bleeding but ready, and each bit of metallic debris from the previous battle hums in anticipation. It is the twin sound of this vibration and his almost unconscious growl, as well as the uncannily quick way he rolls to his feet that quells his would-be ovation. One sweep of his gaze quickly assesses and discards the new threat, but it does nothing for his irritation. 

_'Little frost-bitten brat!'_ he thinks. _'She'd probably crawl into the Wolverine's barracks and risk getting skewered with adamantium if she thought it would have the proper dramatic effect.'_

 

The Emperor stretches out his hand, calling his helmet quickly to his physical grasp. He has it safely on his head in another moment, and it is only then that he acknowledges his guests in any civil manner. There are two figures standing on the other side of the thin stream-- one is a stranger, and the other a known quantity Erik recognized in the same instant he saw the necessity for the shielding of his 'crown'. 

" _Bravissimo_ , my Emperor!" says a light, somehow smokey voice. Emma-Leigh of (what else but?) House Frost is poised on the opposite bank, the posture of her own sinuous curves a thinly veiled challenge. She means it to be pointed and somehow playful, but Erik can see through her childish bravado. He has centuries of practice with manipulators of all types, and was familiar with the original pattern for this one in particular. Looking like some sort of twisted future echo, she is all pale skin on white cloth on platinum blond, pristine thermal body-suit following every fluid line. At her side is a young man, dressed smartly in the uniform of a Teleport-Courier, his mouth still slightly agape. It is he who gasped and, clearly, is still taken aback by Emma-Leigh's apparent gall. When Erik makes eye-contact, the other mutant's skin turns an almost mortal white under its natural green hue. He bows low, tufts of fine black hair moving-- more like tentacles-- of their own accord. In a brief wisp of smoke, he is gone; returning by the same manner on Lehnsherr's side of the bank.

 

"My Lord," he says, almost as if he began speaking before having fully materialized. There's a faint, acrid smell about him that is swiftly carried off by the cold wind. "Forgive me, please. The Lady," he darts a pupil-less glance over at Emma-Leigh, being very careful in his use of the word, "forbade me to intervene." Shrugging off the emergency pack all members of the Courier Guild carry, he makes an awkward attempt to offer it and bow again at the same time. 

"That's a fine entertainment," Magneto says to the girl. "Watching your Emperor be gored." The glare he gives her is disapproving, but even that is more tolerance than many would be allowed. As one of the two regular minders ("retainers", the magistrates insist) appointed by the Court to bother themselves over Erik's private affairs, Emma-Leigh has gained just the slightest amount of leeway. Familiarity, as they once said, often breeds contempt-- she is more used to his irritated barking and thunderous moods than most.

"Oh, my Lord Emperor," the young teleporter begins again, bowing with all the regularity of a clock's swift hand.  
The Lady speaks sternly over him. "You'd have been quite cross, I imagine, had we entered the fray and spoiled your fun. I think this is the most excitement you've had in weeks."

 

True enough, Lehnsherr concedes, enjoying the last of the adrenaline while he still can. In spite of the physical pain and the probable concussion (though perhaps that last bit helps), he feels good. Victorious, relieved, and temporarily drained of rage. Reaching in the courier's regulation emergency kit, he finds a derma-patch and some analgesic gel, which will more than hold him until he can avail himself of a Med-Pod. Had no aid been available, Magneto would certainly have managed to return to his 'palace' despite the pain, but there's no need to refuse sensible medicine if it is available. 

Mostly because he's afraid the teleporter will hit his head if he bows much lower, he says to the boy, "At ease. You haven't offended me, and I appreciate the med-pack…?" Lehnsherr trails off expectantly. 

"Merry, sir," the young mutant murmurs, "of House Wagner, and the Courier's Guild."

Giving a quick and scornful laugh, Emma-Leigh delicately picks her way across the stream in her precariously heeled boots. She shoots Merry a dark look, less of actual malice than of the telepathic houses' typical hauteur. "Some travel hand you are, making a Lady walk."

Merry flinches, but Lehnsherr is secretly grateful to the young man for providing the distraction. He has no idea how long the representative of House Frost stood watching, and he will not ask. The helmet is safely back on his head now, and it will not do to alert anyone to the trepidation a few moments exposure inspires in him. 

 

"Someone ought to give you a good swatting," he says, falling into the somewhat detached imperial persona he's cultivated. Tolerant irritation, he thinks of it; as if the centuries have modulated his whip-lash temper only insofar as he has allowed them to. Perhaps that's true. 

The legends of Genosha are filled with the examples made of those who have crossed him, though the most recent is itself over ten years old. He has no desire to be a god but, since he has been cast as one without his permission, he knows he must protect himself. Whether he likes it or not, the now nameless doktor still lives in the lessons Erik was forced to learn at his feet. 

 

_('She may not have heard anything of merit,' his conscience-- which has long since ceased to sound like anyone other than Charles-- points out. 'Or, if she heard, she might not care. You've been accidentally exposed to her once before. Give her the benefit of the doubt.'_  
And, far back in the well-depths of memory, the real Charles; 'Oh, love, you cannot fight the entire world be yourself.' A tender remonstrance at the sight of some singularly ugly burn Magneto had acquired in one skirmish or another. The conflict isn't memorable-- just Charles, long hair thinning but beautiful, worrying over Erik's wounds with a care that excited sneaking and somewhat self-conscious pleasure within the older mutant himself.  
As for fighting the world… Could such a goal be achieved by one man, or even _Übermensch_? Maybe yes, maybe no. But Erik could try.)

 

"What an original thought," Emma-Leigh says, back in the flat present. Her manner suggests she feels it is beneath her to share the joke, but is too well-mannered to say so. The arch of that brow comes directly from her foremother, announcing the end of her pithy retort. "I rather prefer to dole that sort of thing out myself."

Behind her, Merry makes a choking sound, and turns a more amphibian shade of green.

"There is no room in me," Magneto says, relenting a little, "to disbelieve that." This earns him a delicate huff of laughter from Herself, and a look of transcendent relief from Merry. It's easiest to be grudging or curmudgeonly with them-- after all, they make him feel old. "I certainly hope you have an excellent excuse for trespassing on my privacy." Magneto complains, having rucked open the remains of his jacket to apply the gel and patch. He preforms the first aid almost without looking, seemingly oblivious to the cold as he raises an expectant eyebrow at the interlopers. Merry stands stock-still, doing his best to radiate an aura of 'it's not my fault, I was bought and paid for'. Even Emma-Leigh pauses for a moment, clearly knowing that-- while what passed before was playful resentment-- what she must say now may inspire true anger. No wonder she's been putting up such a gaudy, retiring front. Any lenient feelings Erik might have been entertaining vanish.

"I have been sent by His Excellency Lord Haller of House Xavier-- who is your humble servant," Lady Frost says with careful diction. "He has made several appeals to the other members of the Tetrarchy in regards to a serious educational matter facing the Empire. He now most respectfully requests audience to seek your individual wisdom and advice on the subject." Having delivered this pretty (and mostly insincere, if it came from Haller) speech, Emma-Leigh squares her shoulders, the abrupt cut of her hair brushing against her raised chin. Because he so often equates her with the real Emma, it is always surprising to realize she is only twenty-two. 

"You impinge upon my solitude for _this_?" Magneto asks, with such deadly serenity that Merry flinches again. An 'educational concern', indeed! Erik wonders if the teleporter would have consented to carry this passenger, if he knew what the Telepathic Houses were really up to. For all the Guardian's careful architecture, Genosha is a society splitting from one identity-- _Mutant_ \-- into several. Humanity no longer exists to persecute or provide delineation. Now, left to their own devices and gifted with a relatively stable world, all the little differences in gift and physicality are becoming glaringly evident. Haller's 'educational' lobbying is far more serious than the petty little guise it adopts, and Emma-Leigh's next words confirm that matters are coming to a head. Far more quickly than Hank or the Wolverine had believed, at last conference.

"Lord Haller requests an audience in two days time," the girl continues. Then, more quietly, "Magneto, your Grace, I had no choice."

"Is Haller your Emperor, or am I?"

 

_Haller_. Erik is far too skillful to allow for even the slightest fluctuation in his tone when he speaks the name, but he would spit on it if free to do so. The name, the man and his entire line, starting with the obsequious, usurping little wench they claim descent from. 

Though only a minor Prince Magistrate, Haller is a rising star and exponentially increasing force within the Court. If there's one man on Genosha possessed of limitless ambition, it is he. Erik has never been a man to shirk from high aims-- in any life-- but even he recognizes the danger of power for the sake of power alone. The battle he'd waged for his species had been at once highly idealistic and, he could admit this now-- inherently selfish. His gift for the future, for the race Charles assured him made them both 'not alone', had a shadow in the appeasement of the mutilated boy-child still dwelling within. Safety, for that bedraggled ghost, and for the few people he had allowed himself to love and call family. In Lehnsherr's prime (his "real life") he'd had Charles to check his ambition, even if he rarely listened. After, he'd paid for his conquerer's heart in decades of further humiliation and enslavement, before rising to the throne.  
Again.

As far as he can tell, Haller has no such experience or emotional investment to curb his appetite. 

 

"You are my Emperor, Lord Guardian," Frost replies, actually inclining in a full bow. 

"My orders were to be left alone," he presses, taking several steps forward. He already knows the general answer, but he'll take any additional information he can glean from her reaction. To her credit, she doesn't step back, though her posture definitely angles away. 

"As you say, my Liege." She shoots him a look that, on almost any other woman, would be pleading. "Never the less, I was sent."

 

She's afraid of Haller-- almost to the extent she's afraid of Erik. While they may banter and play-act, she has also seen what Erik himself is capable of, particularly in dispensing justice to the few mutant rapists and murderers Genosha has suffered. Their careers had been… decidedly truncated. Genosha has a small police force, but no definitive judicial system. Lehnsherr has no need for one; he knows _exactly_ what to do with predators, cowards and dogs.  
'Blood and honor', indeed.

Which doesn't solve the problem of Haller, no matter how much Magneto is tempted. He has far too much influence; not just within House Xavier, but amongst all telepaths. The very concept of 'House Xavier' irritates Erik to a phenomenal degree. He is no stranger to the sin of pride, but he still cannot abide those who think themselves equal to Charles' name and legacy without having ever once displayed the compassion, determination, or gifted intelligence that so defined their progenitor. Instead, they rest on the professor's laurels, minimizing Charles' true heroism in their effort to portray him solely as the father and champion of telepaths. The most aggressive of the psionic septs, they make no secret of their desire to breed telepaths worthy of Omega classification. Worse still, they see nothing antithetical between those goals and the philosophy of the man they claim to idolize. To Lehnsherr, they are the definition of potential social upheaval; prestigious, influential, and far too used to utilizing their political power. Clearly, Haller's tendrils of influence reach far into House Frost, and Magneto is willing to bet the nobleman also has more _personal_ leverage with Emma-Leigh. The nature of that remains to be seen.

Vaguely, Erik becomes aware of Merry's constant, nervous shifting behind him. The boy practically radiates terror-- he's very green, and not just in terms of his delicate viridian skin. If only all of Magento's subjects experienced such awe. 

 

"I am beholden to no one," Erik announces. "Haller, least of all." A _very_ significant glance at Lady Frost, but he also makes a point of eye contact with Merry. Even if he doesn't go straight to his Guild Master with the news (and Lehnsherr is willing to bet good money on that), the story and rumor will make the rounds amongst the lower-ranking couriers, and then beyond.

"You have disrupted my hunt," he continues, glancing at the fallen boar-lynx carcasses. None of them are salvageable due to the sheer mutilation necessitated in the battle, and the meat Erik was carrying is spoiled as well. He so loathes waste. "Lord Haller does _not_ dictate my schedule. I am returning to my fortress, but not to receive him. I must think on his impudence, and discuss the problem of his ceaseless lobbying with the full Tetrarchy."

Even with the alien magneto-sphere of Genosha, Lehnsherr is more than capable of flying back on his own. But no, he thinks with a small smile.  
He has a point to make. 

By now, Emma-Leigh is almost as pale as the wasteland snow. Her warm breath releases in dragon's wisps as she tries to curb her respiration against stress. Lehnsherr experiences a brief moment of genuine surprise when she gets to one knee, placing a balled fist over her heart.

"Forgive me, my Emperor--"

"Lady Frost!" Merry interjects, clearly finding this last breach of decorum too impossible to believe. 

"Do be silent!" she snaps at him, briefly turning her bowed head. Beginning again, addressing herself to Erik:

"O Guardian, I am compelled to add one final salient point to Lord Haller's message. He anticipated your distemper, and wishes it known that whenever you so graciously choose to receive him, he has an offering which he assures you will more than compensate you for your inconvenience and benevolent attention upon his House."

 

Like the groaning of a swelling, waking beast, the ground beneath them all begins to tremble. Erik has a careful reign on his temper, but the ferric rock still quakes like a dark sea from which some behemoth is trying to emerge. Behind him, the rest of the mountainous glacier collapses, burying the pack of dead board-lynx, and producing a little cloud of ice crystals. Deftly, the Emperor takes Merry by the elbow and herds the young man-- apparently literally petrified with terror-- a few short steps out of the way. The last curling edges of debris lap ineffectually at their heels. Emma-Leigh, having reared back at her Emperor's approach, loses her balance and goes down, catching herself on one palm. 

"Surely," Magneto murmurs, with the coldest of precision, tungsten frozen in the vacuum of deep space. "Lord Haller does not mean to imply he thinks me susceptible to bribes?"

For a moment, the girl's eyes fruitlessly search Magneto's expression. She purses her lips, as if to stop some sort of prepared response. Clearly thinking better of it, she makes no move to alter the position of supplication Erik's little earthquake has thrown her to. 

"I know not his mind, my Lord." A damning answer, in and of itself-- and a bleakly humorless one to receive from a telepath. "I carry only a message."

"And I will not punish you for his hubris," Magneto replies. After a beat, he wrinkles his nose with slight theatricality. "Although, I think I can smell it from here. No-- I understand your position, Lady, even if he does not. But, since you have been the mechanism by which my sabbatical has been ruined, I am sure _you_ will understand if I borrow your courier." Out of the corner of his eye, Lehnsherr can see Merry's adam's apple bob. If the kid swallowed any more deeply, it might actually be audible in New Muir. "He will return for you once I have excused him. In the meantime, I will accept your service in gathering my things."

 

The Lady makes pretty words of acquiescence, all soft-spoken formality, and Erik knows he has saved himself yet another trouble. Her vanity will keep her away for weeks, sparing him the disadvantage of looking petty himself if he orders her banishment, even for a time. That's _one_ minder out of the way, and Magneto very much needs time to think.  
Of course, for all her abrasive qualities, Emma-Leigh is almost preferable to Gene's constant aura of reserved but infinite compassion. 

 

Pushing that thought aside, Erik nods curtly to the Frost woman, motioning that she get to her feet. A single glance at Merry brings the teleporter forward, offering the black and gold brocade of his arm. Placing a cool hand on that sleeve, Erik says,  
"My fortress, if you please."

"Yes, my Lord Emperor," Merry replies, swallowing hard again. This close, Magneto can see the glimmer of nervous sweat against the high collar of the courier's uniform. He mentally shakes his head a little ruefully, and then they are gone.

  


[ * * * * * * * * * ]

  


To the North of New Muir, the city of the still and silent sea, there lies a ponderous mountain range almost as nameless as the great arctic wastes it guards. Almost as soon as the first permanent structures began going up in the original tent-city colony, both Erik and Mystique began to withdraw. Not together-- oh no! Lehnsherr is sure not even he can live long enough for his former second to forgive him. Entropy will fling the Universe apart before she looks at him without hatred, eyes flashing not gold but a pale and all-too human green. 

 

_("Erik--"  
"I'm sorry my dear. You're simply no longer one of us."_

_Ah, and there is no fool like an old fool, is there? She has no forgiven you in all this time-- so, even if Charles had lived, was there ever really any hope? Brother and sister under the skin, if not in blood._

_"Oh, Charles, you should have killed me when you had the chance…"_

_Isn't Frau Lehnsherr's boy talented? He can make even the blazing heart of a saint bleed with the mortal sin of rage._

_"So help me Erik, go! I cannot even look at you. You were so willing to walk away before-- do not tempt my capacity for mercy: go now!")_

 

Mystique wanders and alights he knows not where, but Magneto was drawn here. Like a compass needle to true north; to heights of ferric stone greater than Earth could ever dream. Genosha is a metallurgist's paradise, full of bizarre elements and strata outside the classifications of traditional geology. Even the few planetary shuttles that remain in service have difficulty navigating anywhere near these stony crags. The highest peak-- the entire mountain-- carved from the rock with nothing but his own will, serves as Erik's sprawling battlements. In accordance with established protocol, the teleport-courier brings them both to the dark piazza situated below.

 

There is always a faint sensation of sticky black _in-between_ during any teleport-- a kind of popping behind the eyes. Though all teleporters employ the same process with their gift, they _present_ differently-- a detail Magneto only noticed once there was a significant population to observe. In that long-lost original life, Erik had known a teleporter whose arrival and departure were always accompanied by black smoke and a whiff of sulfur. He was never sure if Azazel did it deliberately to compliment his looks, but it is the strongest memory he associates with the crimson mutant. The eponymous House established in his honor has enshrined name, image and memory of their forefather-- along with Azazel's great tolerance and enthusiasm for drink.

 

Merry of House Wagner brings them into being with a flash of almost shimmering green, and a nearly overpowering swampy odor. It begins to dissipate quickly enough, but something about it sparks in the dim recesses of Erik's brain. Scent is an atavistic perception, firmly linked with memory and yet so helplessly mute. He looks at Merry more closely and, mistaking the Emperor's scrutiny for displeasure, the young man flushes a verdantly once more.

"I'm sorry," he says, cringing. "The smell doesn't last long, I promise. I have a cousin who smells like sugar-- sometimes, I'm really jealous." He scratches roughly at his black tufts of hair, and will not meet Lehnsherr's gaze. In that moment, Erik decides the young man is worth cultivating, for there is an honesty about him he has not yet learned to mask. He'd be mince-meat in the Court (as Gene so often is), but it could make him a useful and trustworthy informant. A little gentleness will not go amiss here, for the sake of endearing himself. Besides, he smiles inwardly, the youth may expire if some of this tension is not dissolved.

 

For a moment, he gazes on the grand piazza spread before them-- a sort of public quire the boy has utilized just as the Emperor intended him to. The expanse is flat and smooth, less like rock than dark glass smelted into submission. The steps are without ornament, and look almost natural at first glance. Erik has never used them. Even now, he can feel the peculiar magnetic properties of this area gathering around him like eager, affectionate hounds. At the top of that steep flight is small terrace, and an unyielding mountain wall with only the vague, recessed carving of a door. No one can enter this fortress without Erik's aid or-- though none would dare-- the use of sloppy and conventional explosives. The ferric rock parts when it pleases him, and bars the passage of all others.

"Merry, eh?" Magneto asks, certain they are alone in the vast space, with no lobbyists or courtiers waiting in ambush. 

"Yes, my Lord." Sheepishness seems to be an integral part of the young teleporter. "It was the best I could do with 'Mortimer'."

"Toad," Erik says, wisps of associated memory gaining a little substance. 

"Yes, sir." A little more enthusiasm, now. He looks startled; clearly seeing for the first time that Magneto is an actual being, and not just a terrifying symbol. "My mother's house." There is pride in his voice despite the trained subservience of bearing. They are all proud, these mutants, of the ancestors they have mythologized and enshrined. All centuries dead now, naturally, and unable to protest the treatment. 

"Yet you altered the name significantly," Lehnsherr muses. He has met dozens of 'Scott's, 'Ororo's and 'Warren's who adhere strictly to the appellations they have inherited. 

"I am still myself, my Lord." Finally, a little show of spine! Meager, but not hopeless. 

"Good," Erik replies with firm approval. "You will return to Lady Emma-Leigh and usher her back to her sept?" It is not a question, but he allows the misleading inflection, for gentleness' sake. 

"Yes, sir!" is the immediate reply. "And return later, with the fruits of your hunt and labor."

"Very well. You may leave them out on the terrace above. I'll fetch them in the morning." A pause, while he makes his last mental calculations on the young man's character. Merry struggles not to fight under his Emperor's scrutiny. Aside from the gold piping at the cuffs, neck and doublet fastening, his uniform is unadorned. An ensign then, just starting out. The Courier Guild and associated Houses don't tend to side much with the telepathic septs, in any case. After a significant pause, Magneto says, "Whatever the Lady or House Frost was paying you, I will double it. If you have any engagements tomorrow, I will reimburse you and your Guild-Head for any inconvenience caused by cancelation."

"I have no engagements, my Lord."

Erik is not surprised-- it takes time for couriers to work up a loyal clientele, and any other assignments would be mere piecework. Even better, it had never even occurred to the boy to lie, or try bargaining for more. 

"Can you make it from here to the Scientist's Cloister, in the south?"

"With one stop, sir, yes."

The Emperor goes so far as to shake the boy's hand to seal the deal which, of course, causes Merry to fumble and then wince.

 

Accepting the God-Emperor's stipulation of second sunrise for the appointment, the courier seems more than a little relieved to be dismissed. He disappears with a faint 'pop', and the brief marshy odor he can no more control than the color of his eyes or the family to which he was born. Erik frowns, thinking of his few visits to Charles' school. He can remember no real particulars, save that the professor's dream of building it had nearly broken his _neshama_. Dear, idealistic Xavier, who was so lacerated and hurt when naive young men (and later women) were drawn into fighting wars that were not their own. Lehnsherr had always hidden his admiration for the school beneath a very real contempt for the anonymity Charles' insisted was his students' primary protection. Erik had never finished _shul_ , but he remembered straining to read scripture in the dim light, and the burning tower created when the Rabbi's library had been set ablaze. Why was it so forbidden? He can recall only that the powerful found it offensive that his people and their knowledge existed-- that long before he was a mutant, he had another identity which made him Other. The education of Charles' students had been a hidden thing, as well. The humans had not wanted unidentified mutants in their schools, but they would have found separate establishments equally offensive. And suspect.  
He thinks of Lord Haller's current educational crusade, and suppresses the beginnings of an actual shudder.

 

_("That's how it starts, Charles: identification. It ends with being rounded up, experimented on, and eliminated."_  
"Not this time, my friend."  
Oh yes, this time-- and all times. Worlds and clock faces without end. Amen.)

 

Out of old habit, Magneto waves a hand as he parts the seemingly solid mountainside, revealing the beginnings of a passage behind fully six meters of ebony stone. The ferric substance (it feels a great deal like hematite to his senses, but less brittle) ripples closed behind him, settling like the surface of a disturbed pool into an impenetrable shield. The only illumination is a dull but pervasive amber glow, issuing from little niches set into the uneven walls. 'Foxglow stones', the Genoshans call it, though it is neither a stone nor the vague Terran plant it recalls. It's a synthetic material made from a mixture of tough plastic and bioluminescent extract from one of the planet's few indigenous sea creatures-- a distant relative of the fool's gold moss. It requires no external impetus, nor the sort of power-grid that once supported the cities, colonies, and spaceships of Earth. Despite the starships that ferried them to safety, mutantkind has developed an abhorrence of technology. If machines and other artificial contrivances must be suffered, then they must by no means be permitted to network. That, and the development of cyber-organic technology, is exactly what led to the Sentinels developing their hive-like intelligence and 'free will'. 

Lehnsherr makes use of the only machine _he_ permits in his domicile: the MedPod. Despite the name, it's really a simple divan or couch-like contraption employing various healing wavelengths, solvents, patches, and other paraphernalia to encourage expedited but natural organic repair. It has no memory storage, and must be programmed each time by the user from a set of plastic punch-cards. Despite having been pilfered from a drifting military vessel more than two decades ago, it is more than serviceable. The internal damage inflicted by his boar-lynx foe is disinfected and stimulated well into the healing process, with ointment and dermaplast applied to the exterior. There's no evidence of concussion, but there are many who'd cite the thickness of Erik's skull as preventing definitive proof. He doesn't bother with the punch cards for analgesics, nor does he concern himself with aesthetics. Scars provide context, and he was more than shaken when he awoke to find his rejuvenated body had been relieved of several familiar old wounds. 

_(Or, whispers the lightless doubt in his mind, never there at all.)_

  


[ * * * * * * * * * ]

  


The day is mostly lost now, but Erik is not a man who submits easily to repose. He occupies himself at first with his merger housekeeping, and then with the murals and frescos in what he privately thinks of as his Historical Gallery. There's no pretension to artistry in the spartan, methodical reliefs he has hidden in the bowels of his fortress; merely a faithful record of cause and effect. At some point, in a city defined by iron lattices and a precarious river, a youthful version of Lehnsherr had picked up the rudiments of proportion and form. On the pretext of something else entirely, he's certain of that even now-- some quarry to be found

(a murder, a swift and deserved assassination to be accomplished)

or a scent on the trail of that shadow-doktor. Unspeakable eons later, Erik's humanoid shapes, his trees and the outlines of cities imply realistic, if utterly unimaginative, silhouettes. It's like a pantomime, or the ephemeral glass lantern slides the Rebbetzin so adored. It is a useless enterprise, as he would permit none to see them while he still draws breath, but that is not the point. There is a space to be had, a blessed moment of silence within the nucleus of chaos, that he can briefly capture as he focuses on shaping each impression in stone to match his mind's eye. Here he can have silence, even if he cannot have peace. Here he can safely rage-- and reshape after wrathful destruction-- knowing serenity is only a dream. The 'palace' has a madman's layout, titanic and twisting, carved only according to Erik's black and changeable moods. And while those moods remain roughly as volatile as they had been in his first life, Erik's tastes have never become decadent. In fact, he has remained stubbornly utilitarian-- a believer in clean lines of form and function and, above all, restraint. He is plied with a frankly ridiculous number of offerings with every audience or visit to New Muir. Houses, Septs, Guilds and individual noble persons send him a veritable cornucopia of gifts, and he has long since learned he cannot send them back. Whoever thought an Emperor free to make frivolous laws and answer to know one clearly had no understanding of politics. 

Somewhere north along these twisting tunnels, is a large storehouse that would shame a miser, and make a dragon reevaluate his hoard. Gold is rare on Genosha, and Erik hands most of it over to Hank for scientific uses. Never the less, there are trunks of gemstones and other precious metals, both raw and set into ever more elaborate designs. Spices from the western districts, swords and axes from the east. He is sent bolts of sturdy synth-cotton and something called 'snow-velvet', which is pulped and woven in the north. Paper books (unspeakably rare), data crystals, trideo projection mirrors, odd clockwork mechanisms and scrolls without number. They are all his, but to what end? Trifles, toys and-- worst of all-- renditions of history or Old-Earth art so altered that they border on the grotesque. 

 

 

He has been at odds with many today, but none more than himself. There's no spark of inspiration for the his pet project, and no tolerance for the correspondence neatly stacked by the throne in his reception hall. The deeper chambers of his domain are not much furnished, and he stalks through them with all the coiled violence of a predator unwisely caged. He could send a transmission, demand Merry return and take him to Hank's scientific commune this moment, but why tip his hand to any spies Haller may have? Tomorrow will be soon enough, and Erik has other business to use as a pretext-- business he would have seen to in a few days, had his sojourn not been so rudely interrupted. He's tired of thinking, tired of _being_ , and he will not suffer the memory attempting to surface until he absolutely must. It already has its tiny, poison fangs the edge of his consciousness. Dismissing Mystique; being dismissed, if rightly so, by Charles. Old wounds; far too deep and complex to be part of the pretty, official histories.

 

_("Don't worry at it so," says a much younger Charles. Wearied, having suffered his own disillusion and shouldering now the blame he misplaced on Erik for Kennedy's death. But it is a Charles who still loves him, who still *can* love him, because Erik has not committed that irreparable trespass. The professor seems relieved now, that the Brotherhood engineered Lehnsherr's eventual escape, but still angry that his old friend would endanger the school, come to him for succor. Charles does not refuse him, though, never truly turned him away until…_

_"You're like a lion with a thorn in it's paw," Xavier admonishes, bending gently towards the wound in Magneto's neck. A plastic bullet, through and through, having missed the carotid artery by distances so small they would have sobered any other man. It itches despite the careful bandaging, not the least because the metal-bender has often suspected petrochemicals-- so dull to his manipulation-- are especially irritating to his biology._

_"Does that make you Androclus?" Erik tilts his head, so that his nose brushes the line of the younger man's jaw, and the trim growth of new hair there. The Professor's hair is longer; decadent, but oddly becoming on Charles. It is silky under his fingers, the slide of heaven after imprisonment's sensory deprivation. He wonders how it would feel to take gentle fistfuls of it, forcing Charles to give his throat up to ravaging, or as an anchor as Erik is subsumed by that pretty mouth._

_"I," Charles says firmly, "am not sucking thorns, or anything else." He's not really offended, though. He simply wags a finger at the other man, admonishing, "Such presumption!")_

 

"Please," Erik says aloud, for there is no one in these circuitous halls to hear him. Down and down, at last reaching the small cubicle he uses for sleep. "I must have quiet, I must! _G-d damn_ you, Charles!" There is nothing in this room but a pallet of furs and a foxglow stone. The later is recessed behind the Emperor's rather large collection of blue crystals, so that the light it sheds is cerulean, rather than amber. It looks almost like a glass sculpture of fire, or a blaze whose flames have been captured in ice. Laying prone on the pallet, Erik watches the patterns and coruscation thrown by the luster of light through crystal. The illumination is constant, nothing at all like the comforting fluctuations of fire, though it does provide warmth. Never the less, Erik seems to see shadows of movement chasing one another beneath the darker striations-- in endless circles as unfathomably pointless as a clock winding down, or the death of the universe itself. 

The silence in his head is deafening, never mind that its exactly what he asked for. If, as Hank claims, everything he's ever experienced is actually stored in the soft pink folds of his brain, how long until it just gives out? Is it like sleep deprivation, in the way perception and reality begin to diverge into chaos and synthesia? There's just a blank void in his mind's eye, as though he's speaking to a tomb which will never allow for life again.

_'I'm sorry…'_ he thinks-- something he never said enough when Charles was alive. Not when it mattered. It's laughable how little true silence the great Magneto is able to endure. If the company of his beloved is nothing more than a projection, driving him deeper into madness, why should he care? Mutant society has already begun an elaborate re-weaving of the folk-lore inherited from _homo sapiens_ , and stories of deals with the devil are older than time. There's always a catch, a price to be paid, and Erik knows that the oldest form of currency is blood. Life, and the feeling that comes with it. Right now, he'd sell his incredibly theoretical soul-- and anything else that was asked of him-- to have Charles back with him. Present and solid and _his_.

"But I can make do, though," Lehnsherr murmurs. "You'd be amazed on how little a man can live on." Nothing, and Erik just lays there, waiting for the silence to smother him. Surely, he cannot banish so momentous a presence (imagined or no) with one momentary wish in anger.

 

_("Rage and anger may not always get the job done." So soft, that voice-- so close. Strong, slim arms encircling Erik, urging him to lie back against the younger man. He has a hard time being held, must force himself to be calm, but Charles seems interested only in a lazy tactile exploration of Erik's body, no particular sexual intent to be found. He nuzzles Lehnsherr's hair, runs a hand along the taller man's hip and side with an almost hypnotic rhythm. "You're hard to hold onto, you know. When you're angry.")_

 

_'I know,_ Magneto returns presently, unburdening his burning lungs in one long release of air. He forces each muscle to relax, to accept the circumstances and parameters he's set for himself. 

 

In the height of irony-- for his body is still that of a healthy young man-- he finds his restless and weary mind exacerbated by a far more physical problem. He rolls over once, twice, and then returns to his original position, trying to ignore what is to him a mere annoyance. Charles isn't the last person to have shared his bed, but Lehnsherr hasn't taken a lover in a long, long time. Nowadays, he'd have trouble believing their consent, for he has far too much authority to rule out the societal pressure they might feel. Or whatever leverage they might hope to gain. His hand creeps downward, slow and only half-conscious. Madness, fantasy, and dreams.

 

_(By some impetus Erik cannot possibly guess-- for, if he had known in that true and lost world of old he would have found it with alacrity-- Charles finally relents. The chill melts from those cyan eyes, and lips thinned by age twitch with grudging exasperation. Frustration with and for the both of them, for the decades during which they have been unable to break free of the emotional gravity that makes them each a tender hostage of the other._

_"This isn't over," Xavier says, hands folded. He is regally motionless, sitting propped up against the copious pillows of his first-floor bed.)_

That image is real enough itself, a memory from which Magneto weaves his guilty indulgence.

_("No, of course not," Lehnsherr whispers, knowing his transgression has been nearly insurmountable. All the same, he is the black hole to Charles' brilliant star-- his possession is all-consuming, and he will have his friend even if it destroys them both._

_The professor's tall, clean brow furrows, "Such dark thoughts." The touch of his hand on Magneto's worn cheek feels like a benediction._

_"Always," Erik breathes, meaning that and something else entirely. He bows his own graying head, taking those hands so he can kiss the aristocratic wrists, the flutterings of pulse and now-prominent veins._

_"I'll be angry with myself in the morning," Xavier says academically. But he makes no move to deter his lover. Erik takes this as a signal to rise, setting himself carefully on the edge of the bed. He transfers his kisses to that beloved, patrician face. They are the dry but ardent kisses of an old man. The taste of tears develops underneath them, but Magneto says nothing. Unhindered by the helmet he cast aside in recompense, he presses their foreheads together, then kisses just the corner of Charles' mouth. The other man trembles where their hands are clasped; an involuntary quiver of fear.  
"Lead poisoning," Xavier says, dry and self-mocking. _

_Erik wants to say, 'I'm sorry, I don't know why, I never wanted to hurt you and then I did, and I don't have an excuse.' He's smart enough not to give such jumbled notions a voice, but he can't hide the thoughts. With something that could be a snarl, the professor rears up and pulls his tormentor into a violent kiss. Magneto catches a few flashes, like flickers of a projection on screen: Charles, walking but hobbled by the injections, pounding into him furiously; Erik's face on the too-bright beach; their fingers touching surreptitiously in a prison Charles helped to construct. Lehnsherr submits-- to the kiss, to the hand on the back of his neck, and the pleasurable pressure in his mind. _

_"Make yourself useful," Xavier says roughly, practically bleeding unwilling affection. "Show me."_

_That you are still mine, that you have any regret at all, that you will never be free of me as I will never be free of you…_

_Erik could weep--)_

 

He _does_ weep, the G-d Emperor, lost in the memory and the onanism. He begs for release, for his body and the desiccated thing that passes for his guilty heart. He cries out Charles' name but, more than that, he _reaches_. Blind and mute as any non-telepath, it's like any physical muscle one cannot control. It spasms now, because he has always wanted Charles with him in that way, no matter how often he forbade it. 

A sob as he comes. _**"Charles."**_

A caress. Softer than a ghost's eyelash, and just has hard to prove. _'Darling. Darling, I'm so close.'_

"Don't lie to me," Erik mutters into the furs, now damp with sweat and spend. "You've never lied to me before, Charles, so don't start now." He feels disgusting, but he's too exhausted to move, and far too desperate to disturb the faint possibility of sleep. Alone, he drowses, falls into a sleep without dreams.

He shivers faintly, as if from a light and pleasurable touch.

 

_"Erik, love. I'm right here."_

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meredith's Usual Weird Glossary/Notes:  
> [+] _Übermensch_ \-- Nietzsche's term for the 'ultra-human', 'super-man', or higher level of existence/mentality used in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). Sorely, sorely misused in later history; I think it would be something Erik would have become familiar enough with for bits of it to stick even after centuries.  
> [+] Tetrarchy- any ruling group of four.  
> [+] Sept- a clan or group, originally used in Ireland.  
> [+] Androclus- from Aesop's fables, though there are many variations on the story. The central theme is that of a kind young slave on the run from his abusive master, who finds a lion agonized by the thorn stuck in his paw. The slave, Androclus, helps the lion but is later recaptured himself. Years later, he is thrown to the lions in the Roman tradition-- but one of those lions is _his_ lion, which will not harm him and protects him against the others. Because of this 'sorcerous' influence over the lion, both Androclus and the beast are set free.  
>  [+] Rebbetzin- the Rabbi's wife  
> [+] Petrochemicals are often a component in making plastics. They can be obtained from petroleum, other fossil fuels, and are used in lubricants. (*raunchy wink, fist-bump*)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright-- I've reworked this several times, but I think this is as good as its going to get. *fingers crossed* Hopefully you'll enjoy it. As always, I can't thank you enough for just taking the time to read my story. If I could bother you a little more to comment or give kudos, I'd be very much in your debt!
> 
> Speaking of debts, this chapter is dedicated to **valancysnaith** , whose awesomeness is exponential to the point of being impossible to render. This chapter has been vastly improved, thanks to her. <3
> 
> Also, we actually have some Charles in this chapter. Took me damn long enough.

_In the time of Ago, in the kingdoms of All Forgotten and Lost, a mother told her young son that dying was very much like falling asleep. She said this, not bent tenderly over his bed or with him safely settled in her lap, but merely as she passed his tiny, sweaty hand over to the nanny._

_Dying is like going to sleep forever and mind you, Bonnie, make sure he doesn't track mud in the foyer._

_That was Ago, but it is also the eternal present-- for in this great silence, the delineation between past and future have been lost. All memories are NOW, and the child-self lies cheek to cheek with the aged whole._

_The mud is from the cemetery, the strange city of fore-shortened towers and fading stone words. The boy is very small-- small enough to need help with his shoes, and a stool to reach the sink when he brushes his teeth. He looks strange and almost comical in his tiny tailored suit; his cheeks are flushed rosy with February cold and the pinching of far too many relatives. Despite his diligent and self-motivated study of the alphabet, he could not read the stones that stuck out, like strange dragon's teeth, at uncomfortable angles in the frozen ground. Snow-dusted totems, row upon row of them, surrounding an open and yet-unmarked grave. There were stone boxes too, granite and marble like illustrations in a geology textbook. (He may not be able to functionally read the ponderous encyclopedias, but he loves to look at pictures.) An angel lay draped across one such mausoleum, weeping carefully carven tears, and another boasted a far more terrible angel with a fiery sword._

_This little boy's father is dead. Dead, and not sleeping; the shiny wooden coffin was shut tight the entire time and the little boy knows why. A loud explosion took place-- is still taking place, though now no one save this child can hear the thundering echoes. It was the shrieking destruction of a thousand million bits of organic clockwork, synapses and neurons and the _dorsolateral prefrontal_ (he can barely say it, but it can point to it in a diagram) which he has learned in place of nursery rhymes or Red Rover. And the **smell**. That smell of blood and gun powder, which the boy knows have nothing to do with sleep or even nightmare. _

_That's Father with the revolver, with sticky black thoughts all through his head. Furry shadows running 'round and 'round-- **what is it all for, will it never get any better, why why why**. Father was a believer in practical demonstrations. Once he was sure his son understood the illustrations, he took the little boy with him to the Institute one day, showing off a wrinkled pink-gray mass-- the color of taffy and wet dust-- suspended in a huge and faintly yellowing jar. _

_"That is real a human brain, son, not just a diagram. There's one inside my head, and yours too."_

_How terrifying! That all he-- all **anyone** \-- is comes down to just a beige-pink thing no bigger than a cantaloupe. Not a pleasing sight at all; it looks like some infantile fungus, or else something viscus slowly dragging itself across the sea floor. And because it is inside of you, because it _is_ you, you can never get away from it._

_'Blew his brains out,' is what the large important men with briefcases say, when they think the boy and his mother can't hear. As if the dead scientist bagged an elephant in darkest Africa. Dropped it with a single shot._

_'It was all over the place,' the maid tells the gardner. 'Desk, drapes, rug-- you name it.' The boy wonders if all the sad and oozing thoughts got everywhere, too. Did they slink off like inch-worms, are they waiting to find and help themselves to his brain now, instead?_

_Mother lied. The boy knows this and she knows he knows this, which she attributes to his 'strange ways'._

_He-- this thinking substance that was once a little boy-- is _not__ dead. Not asleep, not even  
(a wad of pink taffy)  
a preserved cerebral cortex or organic neurotransmission patterns reconstructed in a database environment. He is only the essential animating force that little boy's father so hotly denied. That incorruptible spark, which cannot be weighed or measured or dissected. 

_It is not dark here. In order to have darkness, one must have light, and neither of those things have ever been whispered of in this… place. It is beyond void; the dull, convex curve of a sphere, Outside of everything that is alive. He's not meant to stay here, in this_  
(limbo, purgatory)  
way station. He knows, with that instinct so long fermented in his hominid ancestors, that one is meant to cross  
(styx, the river styx)  
on the way to somewhere else. 

_What is that Else? He doesn't know. It's immaterial_  
(and ah, polite cocktail laughter)  
because the way is shut. He is caught by the smallest tether, by a remnant of Life no more than a clump of cells or a stray thought-pattern. No matter how infinitesimal, the anchor weighs on him, always threatening to break his metaphorical  
( **spine** )  
back. 

_Who was/is he? The little boy in the story, yes, but the world is full of stories. What is a person_  
( **'--without their scars?'** asks a beloved voice, tender yet full of indomitable strength. Then, not said, but everything implied, **'I am held together by scars-- without them, I would unravel and be nothing at all.** ')  
without their own internal history, their personal mythology? He thinks he may have spoken-- taught, lectured-- about these things once. 

_So forget about that little boy. It's just one facet-- a sharp, painful one. These shards come to him, occasionally, in this place where there is only that which he brings with him. Memories reduced to objects; echoes of arguments, farewells, hellos. The black bird who never stays, peering at him with golden eyes like pools of molten, disappointed affection. A red bird, too, with wings trailing a lace of flame and whose cry is the rending of all universes. The brain, of course, floating pink in its aging jar-- though sometimes, inexplicably, the soft folds_  
( **cerebro** )  
turn to chrome . 

_Or here-- see the lilies under glass? The white petals shimmer with the dried sweat of the dead in the way station of the morgue. The glass itself quivers with the tones of her voice, the instinctive wince_

_( **so like him, so like Brian, and how can I ever expect that to end well?** )_

_that crept in whenever she came upon him unexpectedly. These flowers are not kept in water, but float suspended in alcohol, the smell of it curling around words and hiding behind a blossom-scent so strong one might swoon. Elusive chessmen, empty chairs and place settings, the cool right side of the bed left when no one_  
( **someone** )  
ever comes home. 

_These talismans drift past him and away, brushing against his awareness to inspire all the unexpected trepidation of a swimmer who feels a touch beneath still, dark waters. Mercifully,_

_(is it mercy? **is** it?)_

_while he still recognizes these artifacts as belonging to him, much of their visceral impact has been lost. Numbed, perhaps, is a better term. He remembers enough of his last moments-- tiredness, resignation, regret-- to know he wants the final cleansing whatever is… **across** would provide. And if he cannot have it? Then let the halls go dark on the endless library shelves, let dust cover all the painful chronicles._

_There is a Voice which comes to him, stronger than all the strange ephemera of a life lived and relinquished for a cause he believed just. It is his bell in the fog, in the No-thingness he is less and less inclined to fight. It takes Will to register the pieces of himself, and he is as an animal in a trap-- bound so long he barely believes there was ever anything else._

_There must have been, though. Discount the threads of stories, shuck off the chains of one life's sins like old shoes, but nothing else can account for the mournful, tolling call. And, if there is a Voice, then the story (all the stories) might be true. There might really have once been a boy, ignored or dismissed by most but finally-- redemptively-- loved by a girl he called sister and by one Other as tenderly violent, vibrant, as the necessary polarities which bind the universe._

_**'Let me go.'** Mute, beyond words. A depopulated city with nonsense scrawled on every stone totem, for the sake of all that's holy **let me go**. But it is not the Voice that holds him here, though he lingers just outside the dim warmth of its memory as if it were some homey threshold. His clarion is mournful, longing, but ultimately penitent-- he does not think it would bind him in this purgatory out of malice. _

_And yet, yet…_  
**'I want you by my side.**  
Did you think I didn't hear you', a part of him whispers, 'as we lay skin-to-skin?' The writing of that lifetime upon him, the etching of stone words, is not entirely worn away-- though he would relinquish much of it gladly. 'Our intimacy was vital and profound-- how could I not see your instinct to abscond, to miser me as a dragon hoards its gold?  
And then, you spent me as easily as a shell casing.'  
**'It doesn't look like they're playing by your rules. Maybe it's time to play by theirs.  
Goodbye, old friend.'**

_But then, who can anticipate the capacity for cruelty that exists within love? Though the details are lost to him, he labors still under the weight of un-enacted sin._  
( **quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione…** )  
Had he not longed to smooth the sharpest edges of his beloved's anger, restraining himself only by inches, knowing in his bones it would take less than a thought? To gently hood that bird of prey, lulling until it no longer recognized the binding for what it was-- seduce it to stay of its own accord. 

_Perhaps_  
( **"Please, I must have quiet, I must! _G-d damn_** you, Charles!")  
the fact he lingers is a source of pain for his dear one, as well as himself. 

_He cannot deny his own weakness. One can deny nothing here-- it is the most abrasive and intolerable agony of this place. In spite of the suffering, the tatters of his resentment, he _wants_ to hear that voice-- the music of storms rolling through mineral rich mountains-- but not the… **word** it calls. _

_Merely a name, *his* name-- but to hear it would provide context. It would make the sad little boy and the broken man on the beach, the dependable patriarch and the hermit reeking of cologne and mother's other perfume_  
(on the breath, my G-d, what have I let myself become?)  
real. These stories are a trap to encapsulate him, and so he must remain deaf. 

_Back across the vast infinities, no larger than the width of a casket, he murmurs his love in a voice he does not have. The word for his beloved_  
( **Erik** )  
is not exactly what it would be in the old world of the senses. It is a thing of burning bone, shot through with veins of iron, but he has clutched the name close even as he has discarded his own. 

_'I have loved you for so long--'_  
( **you are not alone** )  
'but you are the wound that will not heal. So do not ask me to answer as the person I was. Call for me all you like-- I am disturbed by your song, and have no wish to answer.' 

_The dead know how to hold grudges… and they dream._

_He cannot move forward, or drink from the cup of Lethe, so he will lie here and listen; love, without reaching back in return. It is impossible to gage the potency of this promise, for all tools and concepts of measurement have been lost. Would stamina be a comfort to him when he does/will fail? Everything here happens in one thunderous cacophony, so tremendous the end result is silence of the worst kind._

_If he is no longer able to lie to himself when he breaks that resolve_  
( **"Erik,"** a ghostly balm, the shadow of a memory of a touch)  
then at least there is no one here to judge. 

_**"Erik, I'm right here."**_

__

* * * * * * * * * 

Hank's 'scientific outpost' has long since outgrown its name, but Erik appreciates the practical nature of the appellation all the same. It is functional, something wholly of the present-- no historical or mythological allusions to be found. He finds it particularly refreshing to be greeted by the sturdy Terran-style buildings when one has just teleported from New Muir. The planetary capital is the construction of mutants who have no memory of Earth, and architecture is an art more difficult to transmit and distort than folklore.

Though the sprawling, organic capital holds no grotesque mockeries of Old Earth, it is never the less extremely disconcerting to the immortal Emperor. The curvilinear spires, dangling walkways and tiered plazas offer no point of reference upon which his eye might readily settle. The whole city is a modern conception in the truest sense of the word; an expression of mutantkind both natural and disconcertingly alien. The citizens' willingness to adopt windows in the most exotic of shapes, for example, never fails to make Erik feel as though he is walking in a dream. The slant of sunlight through Genosha's ubiquitous milky stone masonry and trimmings of limited flora in every odd nook and cranny give one the nagging impression that all rules of geometry and common aesthetics have been suspended. The streets are dizzying, circuitous, almost spiraling as though they are an expression of this new generation's inward preoccupation. 

By contrast, the virtual cloister-city that has sprung up from Hank's humble research outpost is a paradise of squares, rectangles, and appropriate 90 degree angles. Equally organic, it is never the less sensible and conscious of its own growth, with streets laid out in a neat grid-work pattern. Each time he comes, Erik experiences a moment in which he almost believes he could stand to quarter here, before he remembers that he cannot bear to live near anyone at all. 

 

It is clear that Merry is also adjusting to the diametric change in scenery, though his sentiments are likely the reverse of Magneto's. The 'Porters Platform they've landed on is considerably smaller than the one they just left in the city-square of New Muir, though a bit larger than the 'reference stop' out in the desert. Merry has been able to bring them here in three jumps, moving like a game-piece between the platforms all lower-level teleporters use to navigate.

"Have you been here before?" the G-d Emperor asks idly. This far south, second sunrise is still in progress, a bit of jaundiced yellow showing through the thick clouds. 

"Only once, during training," Merry says, falling into step as Magneto strides purposefully along the stone pathways. The young mutant stays a respectful three paces behind the sweep of the ruler's cape, which flutters lightly in the morning breeze. The heavy material appears black these days, only betraying its true royal purple weave under certain lighting conditions. All the colors Erik wears are darker now, though they stay true to the their progenitor violet and magenta hues. He recalls adopting those garish colors to make some sort of operatic point, an aspect of stylization he felt emphasized his cause, but the exact reason is lost to him. He operates on a great deal of half-disinterested habit.

 

_("Explain to me again, about the cape," Charles' voice echoes softly. The professor's ghost is far more quiet this morning than it has been the last few days, but Xavier never missed opportunity to critique Magneto's wardrobe. His remembered tenor sounds fond and indulgent, almost replete. Perhaps he'd made such a comment after a bout of love-making, for there had been a considerable length of time during which Lehnsherr's nascent Brotherhood had not posed no direct threat or negative impact to his old friend's school. He has mercifully forgotten the whys and whens of that change, but those were their best years-- that much Erik knows. Charles was solace, salvation and indulgence faceted together; they made love like naughty children snatching time, or else like those reunited briefly in the midst of some war. Once or twice, he had taken Charles laid out on one of the cape's many incarnations. The love-making had been heady, reverently forceful, consuming. Though Xavier kindly refrained from commenting, there is no way the telepath missed the vivid fantasy such coupling pandered to. Sartorial criticisms aside, Charles' skin, his peony lips and shade-darker nipples, and even his then thinning hair looked luscious against the vivid imperial plum. Erik had clutched at his darling, his too-tender pacifist, and allowed himself to pretend Xavier a prize at last taken in conquest.)_

 

Though his face betrays nothing, Lehnsherr is never the less grateful for the scant company here. The cloister boasts only pedestrian traffic, and those who spot Magneto and his courier invariably nudge one another, or look back with a second startled glance. The Emperor bears this impassively; he has never wilted under the public gaze, possessing his own sense of the dramatic, but he is still grateful that he was able to fend off most of the pageantry that would typically come with his position. After his many incarcerations, he loathes any impediment to his freedom. To say nothing of the instinct for concealment inherent in his roles as fugitive, assassin, and political saboteur. Let the scientists gawk and whisper-- he visits the Beast too infrequently to expect anything else. The denizens pass like well-behaved school-children, or the priests of science Erik often mocks them as. Mutants of every kind and House, all in clinical white tunics or cover-alls as impractical in color as they are sturdy in weave. 

McCoy's laboratory and living quarters are one and the same, housed in a circular building just off the main center square. It is a veritable cave of tiered internal balconies, stacked one on top of the other just as the seemingly endless collection of books-- and those tomes rise in impressive towers, indeed. It is a mecca of traditional bindings which are on the planet as a whole, especially those antiquated articles from Old Earth. The Guardian's library is sprawling in more than one sense; books clustered on tables, chairs, and only sparingly arranged in their appropriate positions on shelves. Both Hank and Charles always suffered from the same academic malady. Namely, if anyone cleaned up after them or tried to organize, the scholar in question would complain for weeks that they couldn't find anything. Containers, equipment, environmental devices, active bunsen burners and mechanical parts also compose the debris which seems to radiate from the center of the large room. 

 

The Guardian all Genoshans know as 'Beast' is currently hunched over a microscope, indigo fur standing out in stark contrast with his white cover-alls. He's never quite overcome the body-consciousness Mystique shed so long ago. Despite being the Outpost's nominal Prince Magistrate (or, at the very least, governor) the scientist also hasn't ever really adjusted to having more than a few colleagues. At the moment, the lab boasts only one other occupant: a mutant girl-child of about twelve Terran years, who is patiently maintaining a coalesced sphere of liquid with her powers, adding it drop by telekinetic drop to a glass tank. Encased within the tank itself is what appears to be a Terran flower. That is, it has none of the tell-tale coloring or tenacious delicacy that mark Geonsha's few species of flora. The more Erik stares at the yellow double-tiered blossom, the more he believes he recognizes it, though he cannot for the life of him remember what it is called.

"Magneto," Beast says by way of greeting, peering at Lehnsherr over an ancient pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. He is the only mutant who wears reading glasses, and Erik often wonders if the scientist has held onto them out of necessity, or as a source of comfort. Then again, given the G-d Emperor's own experience, it's probably both.

"Beast." Erik enters without breaking stride, but Merry lingers in the threshold with admirable decorum. Chuckling, Beast motions for the courier to enter as well. "You are in good health, I trust?" Which is about as close as Erik comes to small-talk.

"Yes," McCoy says, though he frowns as he peers down into the microscope once more. Shaking his head, he removes the slide and stores it carefully, before glancing over at the girl. "Are you almost finished, my dear?" To Lehnsherr, he says, "I wasn't expecting you for a few more days."

"My hunt was cut short," is the safe, dry response. He watches the mutant girl with the same fascination which never fails to overtake him when he sees a particular variant of power for the first time. She floats the ball of liquid across the room to another vat, letting it collapse even as she uses her hands to close the lid of the flower's tank. Hydrokinetic, then. When she turns, Erik can see that her ivory surplice is cleverly slit to allow for the protrusion of a stubby, hairless tail. While her skin is the color of yew or dark almonds, the tail itself tapers from that same shade at its base to a vibrant coral at the tip. 

"Yes, Guardian," says Beast's little helper. Having apparently straightened the workstation to her satisfaction, she approaches them both, dropping a deep curtsy before Magneto. "My Lord Emperor."

Silently, Lehnsherr nods, and motions that she may stand at ease. Her black hair is done up in a complex and faintly aristocratic style he associates more with the telepathic houses. Of course, it's entirely possible that she is the daughter of members of the Scientific Cloister, and thus technically without a House altogether. As the Outpost outgrows its name, it is also outgrowing the small exemptions made for it within Genosha's complex system of clans, septs and guilds. Just another issue the Guardians will need to address in the near future.

"Why don't you take this young man down to the cantina with you?" Beast asks, casting a glance at Magneto for confirmation.

"I'll send for you when I'm ready to leave," the Emperor tells Merry. The Guardians watch as the girl guilelessly takes the teleporter's hand, and they both vanish into the vague illumination of Genosha's gray days.

 

 

"My hunt was interrupted by Lord Haller," Erik says without preamble. "Or his emissary, rather. The man is pushing his educational policy with a frankly fanatical zeal."

"How did he find you, out there in the Wastes?" Hank himself is staring off into the middle distance, clearly musing aloud. 

"Prosaic, I'm afraid." A derisive sniff. "And foolish-- he sent Emma-Leigh."

Beast's eyebrows are always a bit hard to see, being only a shade darker than his skin and fur. Never the less, his surprise is great enough in this case to make the expression clearly visible. "That's a high coin to spend. He must know you'll never trust her now."

"I've never trusted her to begin with."

McCoy snorts, as if to say he hardly expected anything else.

"The Court spends far too much time prying into my affairs," the Emperor mutters darkly. 

"The people want intrigue; visible strands of power, and their interplay-- it makes them feel the system is working. They wanted an Emperor," the scientist shrugs. "We all agreed you were the best suited to the role of figurehead." Which was a polite way of saying that a three day shouting match and plenty of lingering resentment from the First Mutant Conflict had resulted in Erik's 'nomination'. With Mystique's hot refusal to be bound by anyone's expectations, the only so-called 'alternative' was Wolverine. Before Lehnsherr can say anything to this effect, Hank continues, "It's not a position you could have resisted for long-- both personally and politically. What good is a general without an army?"

"Haller seems to create plenty of intrigue without my input," Erik says dryly, ignoring the dig. "Before, these favors and allegiances were mostly petty. Now I fear he's rallying to strike a divide between mutations."

 

"He's already started," Beast says, gracefully flipping to grip the lower rail of the next balcony with his agile toes. Erik is far too accustomed to it to be disconcerted-- at any rate, McCoy has always claimed it helps him think. "My new apprentice, the young girl? Her name is Bishop, of House Xavier." 

Magneto frowns. "I thought children born here were Houseless?" To say nothing of the fact mutations other than telepathy were becoming increasingly rare if at least one parent had psionic gifts. A doubly curious trend, because the X-gene is polymorphic. In theory, a teleporter might give birth to a pyrokinetic, and so on. 

"She wasn't born here." McCoy's bland tone belays the importance of this statement. Then, before Erik can needle him about taking such young acolytes for his pseudo-religion of Science; "Her older brother brought her here and asked me to look after her. I'm given to understand she was somewhat… ill-favored in her House."

"Because her mutation is not telepathic." Said flatly, because it is not a question. No one would dare to physically abuse a child under the G-d Emperor's reign, for object lessons have been enacted in that matter just as they have been illustrated in cases of murder and sexual violation. The legends of Genosha are filled with the examples made of those who have crossed Magneto in these matters of morality, though the most recent is itself over thirty years old. He has no desire to be a god but, since he has been cast as one without his permission, he knows wrath is a defining characteristic for any divinity. Whether he likes it or not, the now nameless doktor still lives in the lessons Erik was forced to learn at his feet. Fear and hate are the two sides of that coin, horribly incestuous cousins which burn and wrestle in the gut. Anger is their far more comfortable cousin and that, at least, can be more easily used as a weapon. 

At the same time, he knows that love cannot be forced-- even the familial kind. Nor can its absence be made punishable, though the lack of it in a paternal relationship is unfathomable to Erik. Did he not see both the uncertainty and beautiful strength in Charles, who blossomed into such a impressive man despite the fact he'd been born with everything and nothing at once? Lehnsherr has been guilty of mocking him at times, true. The professor had held himself with such unassuming and gracious poise. It was only once the assassin had gotten closer-- skin to skin and minds entwined-- that he came to understand the fine fissures of damage. It had no comparison to the cold and ash in which Erik had been forged, but it also could not be treated as a trifle. 

"Yes," Beast admits heavily, unaware of the thoughts behind the G-d Emperor's impassive expression. "He had no specific accusations. He adhered strictly to the statement that he thought she would have more opportunities for education and advancement here."

"Has anyone sought this girl out? Demanded she come home?" Lehnsherr is almost certain he already knows the answer.

A shake of that hair blue visage, "Her brother returned to his sept. I've promised not to readily volunteer his name, though a quick database search on his family would make that a moot point. He's a low-level telepath-- serves some minor function in the Court, I think-- but those of his House must know what he's done. Perhaps they even knew he was planning it." The cringe that follows is so quick and instinctive that Beast probably doesn't realize he's made it. "I'm given to understand that privacy is rather a fluid concept in those Houses."

"Doubtless he'll pay for it, in one way or another," Erik says, thinking of Gene. His other erstwhile 'minder' is also a low-level telepath-- epsilon class, he believes-- and had been added to the Emperor's retinue almost as an afterthought. The boy is young but, of course, everyone on Genosha seems young to Magneto. Much less powerful than his sigma level sisters, Gene spends most of the time running errands between the Court and the Emperor who will not take his place among them. He is forever pestering Erik to sign things and, most of the time, Lehnsherr believes the boy's father (Scott the Red) assigned Gene merely because he would seem less threatening than Emma-Leigh. The old 'good' cop, 'bad' cop. These obsequious little poseurs ought to know that their Emperor has been playing these games since before their Houses were founded, but they persist in their machinations. Ah, but then each generation always thinks it has a new angle, as if dressing up the wheel and calling it something else is an accomplishment. 

 

"Perhaps the favoritism is largely unconscious," Beast is saying. When Lehnsherr merely arches a cynical eyebrow, the scientist summersaults gracefully from his perch to pace the floor instead. On one prowling pass, he removes a stack of plasi-film books and data disks from a nearby chair, finally inviting Magneto to sit. He gives no indication of having noticed his fellow Guardian's distraction, and Erik has at least become very skilled at picking back up in the middle of conversations.

"You give them far too much credit," he says, taking the offered seat and casting his cape behind him while the other mutant rolls his eyes. "If they let something like custody of a child go without comment, think of what they'd be willing to do away from the public eye. I suppose, if confronted, Haller and his ilk could probably claim this is an isolated incident. I imagine it's hard to plan a stealthy disappearance in a citadel full of telepaths."

"Of that, I have no doubt," Beast sighs, and will not cease his prowling. He looks very much deserving of his moniker as his powerful muscles ripple in a quadrupedal gait. The scientist is more tense than Magneto expected, though the matter before them is admittedly disturbing. Still, Lehnsherr suspects the other Guardian has more than Haller's arrogant behavior to go on. 

 

The Emperor's eyes narrow, framed as ever by the his helmet. "What is it that you know?"

"Nothing!" Beast fairly growls. "The whole affair seems to have gotten out of hand rather quickly, but I have nothing to go on save conflicting rumors and a few facts that don't add up!" He rakes a hand through his fur, then compulsively shines his glasses-- both mortal gestures of old. "I have no way to prove half my suspicions without alerting Haller and his allies that those very suspicions exist."

"And those are?"

"Difficult to articulate, in some instances," McCoy says. "I've often chalked it up to accident or coincidence, and perhaps I've done so for too long."

Erik makes a twirling gesture with his finger ('do go on,' it says) even though-- and perhaps because-- he knows it annoys his companion. It's the discordant facts he's after, at least to begin with. The rumors can wait, since one may always assume them to be negative. People are rarely so eager to gossip about good news.

 

"For some time now, our extra-solar salvage efforts have slowed considerably," McCoy says, refusing to be rushed. What he means is the search-- carried out by the few truly space-worthy vehicles left after the long trek from Earth-- to locate abandoned vessels floating in the voids between the stars. Mutantkind did not quit Terra alone. At first, the humans had pursued them, unwilling to go down unaccompanied in atomic flames. That hunt had quickly become flight, as the Sentinels tracked their makers for similar annihilation. Neither _homo sapiens_ or their cybernetic creations possessed the resources to make it quite as far as the Genoshans. There are ghost ships even now, circling tiny moons, skeletons forever frozen in a desperate attempt to mine fuel or hide from Sentinel trackers. Stryker-Trask frigates haunt the black, empty of oxygen and water but still piled high with weapons and technology. There are the space-based Sentinel nests too, of course, though most of those were smart enough to turn around or make planet-fall in the end. In this, their lack of 'humanity' served them well-- they did not have the same delicate, highly specific needs of their creators.

"Inevitable," Lehnsherr responds. "We knew eventually everything that could realistically appropriated would be used. I've opposed exploiting salvaged human technology from the beginning-- certainly, we can't rely on it forever." To be fair, the Genoshans have make significant and successful technological advancements on their own, always mindful of the ultimate taboo-- that no fabricated system should ever even faintly approach sentience. 

"Logical," Beast says, faintly implying this is some sort of feat for Erik. "But the salvage teams hit on a dead fleet-- ten to fifteen ships-- in the Mizar-Alcor cluster, about 83 light-years from Earth That Was. We think they were trying to use the conflicting wavelengths of the six stars to avoid detection by the Sentinels." Inevitably, some of the scientist's excitement does begin to leak into his tone. "The salvage efforts have been going on for about five months now, and we've barely scratched the surface." 

"Wonderful," Magneto says dryly. He doesn't wonder at not being told-- his made his opinion on the endeavor clear from the start. His species has inherited plenty of problems from their progenitors _without_ direct hand-me-downs. More over, though Earth herself is an irradiated and rotting corpse, there are… _things_ infesting those ruins which it would be unwise to rouse. Lehnsherr's never had a particular interest in or memory for astronomy, but he's fairly certain Mizar is too close to Terra for his comfort.

"The influx of equipment and parts alone has been amazing. But," the scientist's voice lowers, "then things started to go missing." He holds a blue palm out for silence, even as Erik starts forward in alarm. "Little things, at first. Things I could blame on errors inventorying items found, or write off as equipment that ended up being less salvageable than it looked. We've encountered such problems before, but never in such profusion." 

"Don't tell me you think they're violating the AI Prohibition." A shake of that hairy head, and Magento says in exasperation, " _What_ , then?"

 

"Microbiology equipment that gets lost or misplaced. Data-tablets on genome mapping that turn out to be corrupted. Records from a ship's mainframe-- you can't tell what has been taken or deleted of course but, when there's a stunning lack of information on bioengineering stored in what was obviously a scientific master computer…" McCoy takes a deep breath, gesturing towards the yellow flower in its tank. "And frozen DNA samples. Like the one we used to create that narcissus." 

"Samples of…?" the Emperor prompts, surprising with an effort a genuine full-body shudder. How well acquainted he is with so-called innovators that rend living beings as though looking for space parts! To say nothing of the rejuvenation tanks and molecular tissue restoration responsible for his current position. The thought of samples any more complex than that innocuous blossom offends any slim thread of decency Genosha may have inherited. 

"I don't know," Hank says honestly, sounding more than a little embarrassed, and resonating oddly with his first incarnation. "I've never had to worry about policing my people. This outpost exists so that all new and restored technology can be shared equally among the Houses."

"Clearly, certain parties are no longer content to wait," Erik says ruefully. "Or to share. What makes you suspect Haller, aside from general ambition?"

"Perhaps its naive, but I'd like to think that most who've made their home here don't have much in the way of divided loyalties." When he sees that Magneto is manfully restraining himself from rolling his eyes, Beast sighs again. "I know, I know-- people can be bought. A mole is not out of the question. But it needn't be that complex. The salvage teams themselves are composed solely of scientists, but the pilots are all volunteers from more practical use of shuttles, like geological survey. When items go missing, the flight crew tends to have at least one member from--"

"House Xavier," Erik growls, thinking once again that those who claim to be the professor's heirs hardly deserve to breathe Charles' name. 

"Or Grey, or Frost," McCoy adds, "even Braddock." That last bit is surprising; Braddock-- always a relatively small sept-- tends to be more isolationist, to avoid being subsumed via marriage into the larger telepathic Houses. A policy of cooperation would indicate a larger agenda. "It's hardly conclusive proof."

"Neither is it something we can afford to ignore," the G-d Emperor opines. As much as he hates to admit it, this is no longer something that can be kept between himself and McCoy. "We may have to convene with the others." 

 

A full gathering of Guardians is hardly a pleasing prospect. It's rare that Mystique and Wolverine can be in each other's general proximity for any length of time without _some_ property damage. The less said about the heroic restraint Erik exercises in not ripping the adamantium skeleton from Logan's body, the better. Whatever odd mentoring relationship the burly mutant formed with Charles, its impression lasts to this day. Logan is more than happy to hold a grudge, enumerate Erik's failings, and jealously guard his own memories of Xavier-- all of which is a recipe for disaster. Hank-- decidedly Hank, in this moment of mingled camaraderie and exposure-- looks abashed. It's ever so slight, but Lehnsherr can read the other mutant easily, and it sends a coil of unpleasant intuition through his gut. 

There is a slight but definitely perceptible tilt to the scientist's chin, coupled oddly with a slumping of the shoulders. It's a very 'Charles' gesture and, somewhere behind old scorches of resentment, Erik recognizes it for what it is. The defiance that comes with having proof, and the terrible burden of being right. 

"That," Hanks says with ominous tonelessness, "is where the rumors come in." 

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [+] _dorsolateral prefrontal_ \- one of the most recently evolved portions of the brain, which matures throughout much of one's life. It's been recently theorized that impairment of one of its many functions (regulating negative emotions and associations) may play a role in depression. I'm no expert on X-Men comic canon, but I don't think a specific reason is ever given for Brian Xavier's suicide, so this is my theory.  
> [+] “The way is shut. It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. The way is shut.” Tolkien reference FTW!  
> [+] _"quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione"_ \-- Latin. From the Catholic prayer 'Confiteor'. 'I have sinned exceedingly in word and thought, what I have done and what I have failed to do'. Catholic Mass didn't switch to English until 1967 (apropos of nothing, I love _Avengers_ fics where Steve headdesks over this). Any mistranslation or misconception is the fault of the author, who is only familiar with the theology via comparative religion courses. ^_~


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I seem to have developed this bad habit of doing massive rewrites whenever I try to do a chapter for this story. (At least that's one excuse for being so slow… don't know what the hell it is for my other stories. Oh, yeah, my short attention span! ^_^) This is the longest section I've written for this fic so far-- lots of broody!Erik along with probably more exposition than is stylistically appropriate. And some OCs, for which I sincerely apologize. But, with this out of the way, I hope to have Charles back in the land of the living in the next installment! *pumps fist*
> 
> I would really, sincerely, appreciate any thoughts, comments, tiny shark!Erik doodles, lilac McAvoy!sweaters, etc. Feedback is the source of my Samson-like powers. ;-)
> 
> Enormous, universe-transcending thanks to all those reading, but most especially to **valancysnaith** , **Willdew** , **avictoriangirl** , and **mistralle**.

Erik greets Merry sparingly when they reconvene in one of the Outpost's many garden-like piazzas. Despite the more Terran trend of the architecture in the scientific cloister, it is still primarily the product of Genoshan minds, a city growing outward from its original handful of buildings. There is an oddly sporadic nature to the arrangement of plants, a sort of biological staccato that could never have been conceived on Earth. It makes Merry's approach even easier to mark, his black Courier's uniform scarcely hidden by the thin trunks and semi-transparent foliage of what passes for Genosha's 'trees'. The place is a park, really, though Magneto's mind does not arrive at the term automatically. Nor does the seemingly innocuous word have entirely pleasant connotations for him when it does spring to mind. 

 

For some time after that failed island battle

_(Was it a fortress, prison, or laboratory at which they took their 'last stand'? A place of birds, Lehnsherr thinks for some reason, but memory fails.)_

he lived in such places of public verdure, little dots of sylvan relief in a city whose bridge was made of gold. A warm land, given to mild nights which saw park benches quickly tenanted by those as equally hopeless (or more so) as the old man he had been. Without his powers, literally stripped to a raw and quivering humanity that made him loathe his own skin, Erik had been truly lost. Blind or disabled, as the veterans of human wars who begged by fountains or on street corners until the police moved them along. In some ways, it had been worse than his decade-long imprisonment for then, at least, the _possibility_ of his metal-sense had still existed, even if there was nothing to see/feel. How to describe such loss to one born with only five senses? Even mutants with more physical adaptations might not understand the sense of stifling, of suffocation.

Charles would have known implicitly, having laid his own powers flush against Erik's, having reveled in their similarly alien perspectives and, on rare occasion, reached through Lehnsherr to exercise that magnetic sense himself. He might even have been ready, despite Magneto's latest suicide plunge, to _empathize_ \-- to lay his hand on Erik's age-thinned flesh and convey solidarity in a way that had little to do with psychic powers. That lambent force of compassion which so infused the professor, far more mysterious to the metal-bender than telepathy or pyrokinesis. 

But Charles was dead, felled by the firebird Erik himself had intended to wield. Despite the ringing of the awful, final tone

_(dead, Charles is dead-- oh, you finished what you started forty years ago on that beach, are you happy now? fallen mothers, lost children, and finally slain lover/brother; he continued so strongly in spite of you and now Charles is _dead_)_

in his skull upon waking each morning, the thing which had been Magneto tried to feel some small relief. The Cure was a poison that salted the inner well of one's self, and it had seemed so omnipotent and inescapable at the time. Too powerful to be mere suppression, Erik had been sure the bitter concoction would have driven the professor mad. It was the difference between being trapped in the dark and having your eyes lingeringly peeled out of your skull. Erik's life, the fate of mutant kind (and really, he'd spent so long fighting that there seemed little difference between the two) appeared abruptly truncated. The next stage of evolution, canceled without notice and punctuated-- as all things seemed to be-- with a needle that was really only a bullet in disguise. Better that Charles had not lived to see his students flayed alive, robbed of personhood. Or so Erik had told himself as he lay waiting for sleep on those park benches, under overpasses, or at the feet of statues he could no longer rip down with a thought. A mercy, he'd told his internal judge and jury-- who were just as ruthless as the great Magneto had once been and, unmoved, found him guilty all over again. 

 

That particular defeat had not been the great terminus he'd assumed, of course. For close to a year, Lehnsherr had worked odd jobs in those shadowy cracks which could be found in all cities-- those places of transience and blurring, where it was least likely his face would be recognized, never mind enduring any awkward questions. Menial jobs that paid cash, that further punished a body which could no longer quite keep up with his will, supplemented by _tzedakah_ at from the nearest synagogue. A strange word to remember, of all the damned things, especially considering he cannot recall the name of his mother's people, or what distinguished their G-d or ways as objectionable in the first place. At the time, that charity had been the only kind he could bear, and that hardly with any grace. A hot meal or a donated shirt, which he forced himself to accept even if he could not force himself to meet his benefactors' eyes. 

He had felt some shame then, yes, but not the kind Xavier might have classified as some sort of stirring change in perspective. Individual humans had been kind to Erik now and again, and Magda had employed as much acceptance towards his powers as love could possibly allow, but the mind of any crowd was a different thing entirely. He had always been astonished that one as powerful as Charles could not understand just how insidiously cancerous that 'group think' could be-- a telepath who could not see the forest for the trees. He had been old and hard, or had thought of himself as such within the lifetime he had expected. By the time he acknowledged that he had once considered himself human and part of another people, too much of him had calcified. Though awed or at least prudently respectful of his power and command, Magneto known for years that the young recruits to his Brotherhood considered him a fossil. They could no more conceive of the decades which had shaped him than he could be bothered to understand their generation. It mattered little. Whatever other impertinences he was forced to break them of, none ever dared to say such things to his face. He let them think as they pleased and-- unlike the beloved professor-- allowed his students to learn their lessons the hard way. 

A fool, he, to have thought himself finished with his own schooling. 

 

Presently, an enthusiastic chirp draws Erik from his morbid associations, and he sees Beast's little helper hurrying to keep up with the teleporter's stride. The girl-- Bishop-- seems to have taken her role as guide quite seriously, and she makes a ridiculous attempt at solemnity once she considers herself in the G-d Emperor's presence. A little ways to the east, Magneto can see where the path branches off towards a little plaza, complete with a fountain and stone tables for those long games of Devil's Tower or 'Watch Me' Genoshans so enjoy. It could, with enough imagination, be a particularly sedate and affluent city green on Earth, save that there is nothing green about it.

That verdant color-- emerald, mint, evergreen, even chartreuse-- is conspicuously rare on this planet. So ubiquitous on his own home world, Erik could never have imagined how the deficit would effect him, though it is not the maddening starvation he feels for a certain irreplaceable shade of blue. The entire first generation of mutant colonists had been impacted by this startling change in world pallet, so that green dye became a costly commodity. A preponderance of songs were composed lauding the 'green hills of Terra'; not, Erik thinks to himself cynically, that there were many of _those_ left on Earth when it was abandoned. Even now, green is considered a color of preferment, worn by nobility and those who have enough money to compensate for lack of pedigree. Even the faint peridot hue of Merry's wild hair is catching a few eyes, though those glances stay riveted upon catching sight of Magneto. A few adults at their game tables studiously pretend disinterest, but the children on the open yellow moss are slowly withdrawing from their play to gape silently, much to their teacher's consternation. 

 

These children-- all children, to be honest-- are as incongruous to Erik as he is to them. He had little exposure to his own progeny in their formative years, approaching them far better (though not entirely successfully) as adults. To say nothing of the willful iron blank he had made of his own childhood even in that first life. Thus, in his estimation, the minds of children move curiously; they are unpredictable creatures, possessed of an inward nature many of their caregivers seem to deny. Charles had no such ignorance, of course; an observation Lehnsherr always sneeringly disguised as an insult, usually drawing comparisons regarding youthful naiveté. 'Of course children seem rather insane to adults,' Xavier elaborated once during one of their many 'hostage' chess games. Magneto rather thought Charles was often flattered by being absconded with, though it did not spare his kidnapper recitations of duties being forfeited or quaint anecdotes about the students themselves. 'Adult values are radically different than those of youth. And,' he'd added, more quietly, skirting the edge of an argument. 'What you're willing to risk always reveals what you value.'

These children, who know of humanity only as a kind of fantastic monster of folklore, exercise their powers freely, granting one another monikers that often distinguish them more than their recycled names. Dawn-shaker, Pin Head, Clobber, Dovetail, Shade; as the teacher tries valiantly to round up her brood, Erik hears a little one call her 'Miss Sound Quake'. Had they been born in the death-throes of Earth That Was, many of these students whose gifts lacked military application would have been 'euthanized'. Others would have been collared, as Lehnsherr had been, enslaved to fight for their very exterminators. Treated worse than pigs or dogs, they were sometimes forced to breed as such. Though humans sought the eventual destruction of mutantkind, they were not above trying to make a better weapon via genetic match. If the result was dissatisfying, it was merely put down.  
'No harm,' as one Stryker scientist informed Erik while taking a particularly unpleasant and intimate sample, 'no foul.'

How Erik himself had always envied those like Azazel and Mystique their visible badge of difference. Now the sheer variety and adaptation of the mutant form have reached a spectra of which even Xavier could only dream. All shapes, sizes, and color combinations; tails, claws, additional fingers, and epidermal morphologies like Emma's diamond form. House Frost seems to have lost that additional mutation all together-- though she posthumously had five daughters to spread such characteristics. Now what seemed like an odd genetic fluke, the sort of bizarre evolutionary off-shoots and niches Charles so loved to study, has taken on more ominous connotations. Other septs have more than made up for the 'standardization' (or total lack) of secondary mutations in the telepathic Houses; fur, jade, and even translucent flesh are just a few examples he can spot in the rambunctious class before him. Even Houses with more power-based manifestations, like Summers and Lee, often have visual indicators in apparatus that helps them regulate the fantastic amount of energy their bodies generate.

 

Upon hearing Bishop cough, Erik turns his gaze back on her. Though making an effort to stand at attention, she is still young enough to find true stillness impossible. She cannot be much younger than Magneto's fellow soldier on Callisto, who died without knowing how much she reminded him of Anya. And Bishop, a child of Genosha, has been found 'less than desirable', a virtual outcast from House _Xavier_. For a moment, the G-d Emperor almost asks if she is happy here, but the notion passes. One can only imagine what sort of response it would garner and besides, while she presents a solemn picture, Bishop's eyes are bright and Lehnsherr had heard the faint soprano monologue she'd been foisting on Merry as they approached. Instead, he inclines his head just once to acknowledge her, and motions the courier forward.

"Apologies, my Emperor, if you were kept waiting," the teleporter says, now sporting a greenish hue on his cheeks as well. A flush of potential embarrassment. How strange it is to see glimpses of the familiar within the random shuffling of the hereditary deck. Toad, who lacked shame in regards to almost all bodily functions, always had an odd propensity to blush from shyness, particularly around women. Amazing, in some ways, that he should have had heirs at all. But then, as a younger and much breezier Mystique used to say (usually with pointed look at Erik's helmet, and particularly when in the presence of Charles), 'There's a lid for every pot.'

"Indeed, no," Magneto says smoothly. Yet there is some impatience in him, a discomforting vibration in his very bones. His reputation as a taciturn ruler precedes him; both young mutants watch him as if patiently awaiting the will of some monolithic oracle. Beyond them, the now awed-to-silence cluster of children stare openly, trying to decide-- as their adult counterparts are-- just what Erik's presence might portend. 

_'More than you know, perhaps,'_ Lehnsherr thinks within the prison/fortress of his helmet. McCoy's words linger in the fore of his mind, oil coagulating unpleasantly on the surface of waters darker still. Rumors, only rumors. Yet, for the first time in innumerable decades, Erik can distinctly make out the cry of that boy-corpse left forever screaming within. 

 

"There's no need to linger, however," he says, forcing the odd roughness in his voice to something more sharp and commanding. Turning, he makes the token gesture familiar to all couriers-- as men once offered their arms to women on Earth. "The fortress, if you please. With haste."

If Merry is surprised at being asked to eschew the Outpost's public platform, he's smart enough not to show it. Such props serve only to organize the 'flight paths' of a world with thousands of teleporters. It's good to know that-- unlike Haller-- some people still take Erik's merest spoken word as law. With a most unobtrusive and decorous hand, the young courier anchors himself on Lehnsherr's arm. His particular acrid scent reaches the Emperor for the briefest of moments before it, and all else, give way to absence.

*

_"Is it even in you to lay down your sword, Erik?" Charles asked once. They had been drowsing together in some foreign bed-- one snatched tryst or another-- aware of all the little places where their bodies touched and warmed. Always, at such times, a languorous tension enveloped them following the initial satiation, as though their union were both a delicious drug and an incendiary force. An incongruous idea, but the best description Lehnsherr had for the way time seemed to stretch around them, bowing and transforming under its own weight like the flow of honey or sap. Slow, slow, but ultimately careening away as each drop separated and became lost. Every moment of peaceful companionship was a stolen thing, an intermission. It _had_ to be; for surely it could not be the reverse, with their lives as leaders and pioneers for their species being nightmares which interrupted the privacy of feeling creatures? Not icons, not larger than life after all, but men of dimension with whom both clean-cut professor and garish anarchist could not simultaneously exist._

_When the doors of cabins or borrowed penthouses or questionable hotel rooms slammed shut, the world took on a new texture for Erik. What of it? He had no need for color or vibrancy outside Charles' presence; no need for tactile delights or warmth if they could not be shared with the scant few he loved. His wife-- lovely, stubborn, passionately practical-- had been long gone by this time, leaving Charles alone to prevent Erik from being swallowed up by Magneto. His grief stirred whenever he had Xavier to himself, and it was two-fold. Both for the pain he had caused so gentle and treasured a man, and in the odd fear of betrayal that dogs a widower's heels._

_'You are allowed to be happy,' Charles had whispered that first time, two years and several military assaults after that devastating loss. Snarling, Erik had taken that sympathetic mouth in kiss of violence and possession he would have pressed on no other. Unable to bear the professor's compassion, unable to live without it, and knowing as always that Charles could handle his combative response. Could give back in kind._

_Their days of combative foreplay had mostly passed by then, however. Anger mulled to resentful longing and regret while aging bones shed calcium and shoulders protested far too often under chosen loads. How luxurious it was, then, bound up in that glow of sated limbs and freckles Erik-- despite the many years-- still had not quite successfully mapped. A cold wind howled without-- their haven had been a cabin, most likely. He'd indulged Xavier's love of blankets and delighted the other man by heating the fire-poker to set with hearth blazing without moving an inch from their embrace. Though the mahogany hair was long gone, the shape of Charles' skull was still beautiful in the firelight. Lehnsherr had paused in stroking it, and perhaps the professor had spoken of metaphorical swords and their abandonment only because he thought his lover asleep._

_It was not a new or novel concept, Charles' doubt that Erik-- or Magneto, at least-- might not be able to exist without some foe. During one of their shouting matches, such a question would have resulted in mutinous silence from the metal-bender, or accusations about Charles' own inability to deal with conflict. Yet Xavier had voiced it so quietly, without the expectation of response, that Erik had found an answer springing readily to his lips._

_"I don't fight because I enjoy it, liebling," he'd said, hand resuming its sweeping motion against the professor's head. All the way down now, along neck and back, stopping just short of a certain vertebrae. He knew exactly the topography of the kingdom he'd scorched bare. "I am made to survive the world as it is, not as you want it to be."_

_Potential responses to that were varied, made all the more volatile by tone, intimacy, and the perpetual tinderbox in which they made love. Charles had chosen to draw Erik closer still, tucking his own head under the taller man's chin and sighing there, as if having reached some sanctuary. An observer-- not that Lehnsherr would have tolerated such a possibility-- would have laughed. There had never been anything safe or sheltering about Magneto. All but the most mercenary of his followers joined expecting to fight and die, and even those not in pursuit of 'glory' acknowledged that eventually their luck-- or money, or both-- would run out. A part of Erik wanted to laugh as well, at this precious communion, though not in derision. There was a facet of selfish joy for, since no one would believe it, this part of Charles was rendered Erik's alone. He was always clutching at what pieces of this beloved he might claim._

_The rest, of course, was the type of hysterical gale smothered by all save those wishing to bid sanity farewell._

_"When, then, will you ever have rest?" that cultured voice had murmured, imprinting the words against Lehnsherr's pulse. As if the telepath had somehow drawn a line down the years and centuries through which Erik would outpace him, oppressed by solitude and his own refusal to surrender. Whether precognition or simple extrapolation, Charles' lips touched his lover's vitality as one might soothe a wound… or absorb it. The gentle cadences might still have blazed their way to a battleground, if not for those accompanying actions. Or perhaps even then, since one of the peculiarities of their relationship had always involved oblique intuitions and assumptions regarding all ceasefires. Instead, Lehnsherr had luxuriated in their snatched tranquility, feeling no small amount of pride as well. To have pleased Charles to a degree of aurulent melting at which he did _not_ phrase the question as bait was an accomplishment in and of itself.  
Or so Erik had thought at the time, not considering the morbid lethargy resignation can bring._

_"When does one ever stop fighting?" he'd grumbled, finding the question a bit ridiculous no matter how seemingly sleepy or idle its tone. He preferred, also, to debate Xavier when they had an audience of followers rather than a waste of these precious hours outside recorded time. In these blanks, gaps in a narrative that would become history and degrade into legend, Charles was entirely his-- and Erik had never appreciated sharing the telepath with the humans so undeserving of Xavier's defense. To emphasize this point, he'd pulled Charles closer, leaning in to make their resting embrace also something of a subtle cage.  
"Really, Charles," he'd whispered in his most pedantic drawl. If he was insufferable enough, the professor might easily decide to give his sardonic mouth a more absorbing assignment. "When the enemy is gone."_

_The professor only sighed, his kiss soothing rather than incendiary, and said nothing more._

_It had been a very tired sound._

*

Though the status of G-d Emperor should be sufficient to excuse him from such trials, Magneto has never the less found himself subjected to Beast's lectures on the mechanics of teleportation on numerous occasions. According to the scientist (who is never shy about crediting Charles' contributions, likely part of a misguided effort to make Erik flinch), teleporters harness at will what other beings possess only as a vanishingly small probability. Their electron waves-- which are, themselves, composed only of probability-- extend far beyond their bodies in the same manner as all other creatures. Yet teleporters can extend this invisible corona by conscious effort, maintaining an association between scattered electrons via united vibration, thus keeping track of 'themselves' as they move their atoms from the central hub of the wave to its farthest reach.

It all gives Lehnsherr a profound headache, not the least of which because one hardly wants to think of such minutia when relying on teleporters as a primary method of transportation. It is one thing for a courier to risk scrambling their own essential pattern, and another matter entirely to know that you are also dependent on what is essentially an instinctive flex of 'muscle'. (Though Azazel would, of course, have taken great exception to diminishing his powers to such a paltry metaphor.) The study of mutations by mutants themselves is still a source of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for all Guardians save Beast, whose restless curiosity remains as youthful as his appearance. As with so many subjects, Hank hardly needs encouragement to go on about electrons being anywhere-- or worse still, any _when_ \-- simultaneously. It's a terrifying concept, and one that visits Lehnsherr rather violently as he and his 'transportation' suddenly rematerialize not on New Muir's courier platform, but on the ebony piazza below Magneto's own mountain fortress. At the foot of the cascading steps, to be precise-- at least the boy knows well enough not to dump the G-d Emperor on his own front doorstep. Almost as startling as the unexpected scenery is the musical laughter than rings through the arctic air.

 

" _Bludiehel!_ " Merry cries, looking perhaps all of twelve in his unbridled delight. "I got it all in one go!" Though Erik's sharp green glance stems from surprise rather than censure, the courier quickly subdues himself, his own gaze on the preternaturally smooth valley floor as his cheeks darken with shame. His whisper of, "Your pardon, G-d Emperor" is so soft as to be nearly unintelligible. 

Lehnsherr waves a gloved hand dismissively. It has been so long since someone has expressed genuine, uncalculated emotion in his presence that he might secretly find it somewhat endearing.  
If not for the strange word that came with it.

"What did you say?" he asks, voice void of inflection. 

"I--" the young man stumbles, "-- that is, the furthest I can usually 'port is--"

"Before that."

" _Bludiehel_?" it's an almost desperate question, and the care taken with the pronunciation does little to savage syllables so clearly unfamiliar to the speaker. It's not a Genoshan word, though the planet's language is such a amalgamation of Earth tongues that even McCoy has lost track. Erik himself was multilingual in his first life and can sometimes identify related words, but he has forgotten much-- including the name of the standard speech to which Charles' was native.

 

_Bludiehel_ ; bloody hell.  
Words repeated too often to carry the flavor of any particular occasion, and expressed in a cavalcade of tones. Irritation, yes, but also laughing disbelief, honest incredulity, and a teacher's playful reversion to days as a student.

( _'Bloody hell, Erik, what were you thinking?!'_

 _So quiet, too, in later years, like a child whispering to avoid rebuke. So weighty, the mantle of a paragon of virtue. Ignoring the chains of his own operatic 'villain'-hood, Magneto would smirk and ask the telepath if Charles was expecting to receive detention._ )

Despite Merry's celebratory usage, and gross phonemic mangling, the association is strong enough to stir memories already lying restless in their supposed slumber. Lehnsherr is beset by ghosts today, by jagged details so mundane they seem shocking when they prick along his mental fingers. Of all the phrases to resurface light-years from its last place of utterance…

 

Not bothering to affect idleness after his initial reaction, Erik fixes the other mutant with a penetrating stare. "Where did you hear that expression?"

"The Recovery Project?" the courier says tentatively, referring to yet another of the Cloister's 'pet' endeavors. It is not enough to merely pry bulky databases from derelicts-- they must bring this dangerous driftwood home, pry at them as though the void of space has ever cast anything fortuitous on sentient shores. "They published two novels from Old Earth recently. Years of translation work, my cousin said. It's a slang phrase apparently and… Well, I'm not much inclined towards reading, but the it's all the rage now with city youth. It means--"

"I know what it means," Magneto returns, moderating his tone to scholarly finality rather than impatience. Barely, barely. "Likely better than you do."

"Yes, my Lord."

 

Erik turns away, leaving the boy to shift uncomfortably in a silence broken only by the mountain winds. A dreadful sense of synchronicity crawls against his spine, sympathetic wounds which-- even if carried a thousand years-- can never truly be absolved. Penance is such a paltry thing, and he would not be shed of these chains. It's the persistence of vision he fears, as though some _mazel 'ra_ was laid upon his forehead as an infant, in a forgotten town on a forfeit planet, so potent it has followed him through lives and lightyears and rejuvenated cells to this precise spot. The memory of Charles

( _'When, then, will you ever have rest?'_ )

cannot actually be something that occurred in that other-space through which teleporters and their passengers move-- there simply wasn't enough time. Yet it felt so very vivid and immediate; not the condensed recollection of an event, but a phantom re-experiencing. 

( _'Erik, darling. I'm right here.'_ )

 

"You are _not_," Magneto says, lost words wrenched so painfully from his gut they carry almost no discernible feeling. They're spoken softly enough, but the wind betrays him. Merry's rote interrogative of 'my Lord?' sounds close to petrified, but the G-d Emperor's face must be impassive enough when he turns for the boy shows no increased alarm. 

"You are not needed further today," Lehnsherr says with a polite nod. "I would appreciate it if you refrain from taking other assignments, at the moment. I will contact your Guild Master and see that your pay is more… commensurate with your new obligations. Return here in two days time." 

More agreement and bowing, which Erik does not bother to wait out. He begins climbing the steps, veins jamming with restless energy and that psychological poison they once referred to as _deja vu_. (Non-existent G-d help them should _that_ word resurface on Genosha, for to name a thing is to give it substance.) Even taking flight, brief though it might be, will not remedy this agitation. 

There is a faint, almost inaudible 'pop' behind him, but the howling whistle of winding crevasses erases any lingering scent.

 

 

Erik has no idea if he will actually need the courier in two days time but, given the number of variables in granting an audience to Haller-- to say nothing of his fellow Guardians' new propensity for meeting behind his back-- it is best to be prepared. How had Hank put it? 'Not active deception, but a misalignment of timing and optics?' Beast is the only one amongst the Tetrarchy with any true political experience, and his acumen is only more irritating for so often being correct. His point is well taken; with the exception of Mystique, the movements of a Guardian are, by definition, high-profile. In light of new developments, they will need eyes and ears within the Court, persons whose words and deeds will not draw the glare of microscopic attention. There's every chance, of course, that Mortimer of House Wagner was somehow chosen by Haller or Emma-Leigh as a clever and seemingly innocuous plant, but the strategist in Lehnsherr finds it unlikely. Haller has little concern for underlings and, given the embarrassment and loss of political capital he forced on Emma-Leigh, it is unlikely the blond telepath will go much out of her way voluntarily.

And that's another problem, isn't it? Magneto has been too lax, while Haller has amassed an arsenal of fear-- a veritable library of secrets and vulnerabilities with which to motivate others. The obsequious little poseur has played tin god in his citadel too long, especially if the darkest whispers are true. 

( _"There is no learning--"_  
it burns, he's strapped down and its only metal but he can't, he can't move it and his skin is on _fire_. but the doctor's words are cool and pedantic.  
"--without pain.")

 

Magneto smiles mirthlessly. Ah, the monster of his childhood, so disremembered and yet somehow animate still. A thing roused from the grave, held together by rotting sinew and that truly despicable ichor which passed for its 'soul'. Yet sometimes, the truth is still the truth even when spoken by a devil. Gaining the high entryway at last, Lehnsherr's grim remembrances and subterranean anger find an unwelcome target for their fermenting pressures. While on the steps, he had sensed a weight on the balcony near his threshold but had, since it was utterly unmoving, assumed it something left by one of his all-too-frequent petitioners. To Erik's irritation-- and the being's great misfortune-- he can see now that it is a living thing. His body is tensed for ambush before he even climbs the last step, but another moment and a second glance show this creatures presence is a result of another type of foolishness entirely. In a way, it's a pity-- a false alarm priming adrenaline which now buzzes uselessly in his veins. The fight with the boar-lynx came too early yesterday. It would be a marvelous physical outlet now.

The figure he's been presented with will not be a source of threat or aggression. Hunched into a crevasse between mountain wall and balustrade, it is curled up so tightly it might well be only a lump of discarded fabric-- if such things snored softly and sought shelter from the wind. 

"Gene," Lehnsherr prompts firmly, coming to stand over the young man. The other mutant is wrapped tightly in on himself, teeth chattering a little even in his doze. Magento is not sure which is more discouraging; that he was able to sneak up on a telepath, or that the boy is fool enough to have waited out here in the cold like a desperate waif. The former, of course, is not precisely the boy's fault-- one more facet of the horrible mosaic taking shape. Erik's mood darkens further; his helmet may block psychic gifts, but Charles was only the first of many to tell him that the ubiquitous 'crown' renders its wearer a 'void' which, in its own way, is discernible to those with extra-sensory perception. How this interacts with Gene's 'handicap' is anyone's guess. 

 

"Gene!" he says again, finally nudging the other mutant with his boot. Gene of House Xavier starts violently, perpetually gloved hands thrusting out in unconscious self-defense. Shaking himself, he peers up at Erik from the deep sapphire hood of his cloak, looking mortified, resigned, and more than a little bit frustrated with himself. Heat flares beneath the cinnamon dusting on his high cheekbones. Freckles are rare on Genosha and, coupled with the just-off-shade of blue eyes, make Magneto eager for the boy to push back his cowl to reveal both the close-cropped black hair and the fallacy of any supposed resemblance to someone… else. Only a fool-- a desperate fool, with bad eyesight and hands groping in a too-dark room-- would even make the comparison to begin with. Even as he chastises himself, Lehnsherr does put a hand out to steady the boy as he leaps to his feet.

"My Lord," says the erstwhile liaison, still rapidly blinking away the remnants of sleep. "My deepest apologies. You are too kind to your servant."

Magneto does nothing to hide the roll of his eyes, though the rest of his face remains impassive. "What are you doing out here, Gene?"

Lehnsherr can guess, of course, but in this case he hopes he's in error. He'd hate to have spent the small, atypical kindness of a literal helping hand for nothing. He's reasonably tolerant of Gene-- when he trusts himself to be, that is-- which is about as close an approximation of preference as he can reach with his alien subjects. Taking the young man to task for Haller's disrespectful persistence would be an unpleasant ending to a day whose wretchedness has already been rather noteworthy. Never the less, he will mete out punishment fear greater than Emma-Leigh's should it prove necessary. 

"The Debutant Committee has sent me with this year's draft of the invitation list," the young telepath says, completely oblivious to his brief brush with peril. Smiling wanly, he reaches deftly within his voluminous mantle to produce a palm-sized case of data cubes.

 

Erik's exhale takes the place of derisive chuckles; not at the boy, but at the petty, vapid concerns of the Court when such divisive political currents are at play. It's no different from any previous iteration of his cycle-- the quiet expulsions from jobs and universities, five minutes of newscast on this or that socio-economic crisis, a carefully edited clip of the fighting on Callisto and then, ah! On to the meat of matters-- the latest starlet's divorce, insider tips from the zero-G rugby player, which colors are an absolute 'no' this season. Clearly, (and he is too weary for even sarcasm to maintain its insulating sting) the opportunity to invite or snub representatives of House nobility for a three day festival of gluttony and sexual cattle-call is absolutely paramount.

"It's that soon, is it?" Magneto asks, cursing this second false alarm. One never feels so tired as after a fight has been thwarted. 

"This month is almost gone," Gene shrugs, a gesture thankfully quite unlike that of his House's namesake. "After that, the committee will only have the month of the Short Cat in which to plan."

 

Another idiosyncrasy of Genoshan time-keeping; months are identified by the constellation rising at First Dawn. These asterisms include nothing which could be identified on Earth, though a few of the same stars are visible. There are fourteen major constellations, if Erik remembers correctly, with a minor addition to keep the year 'even'. With no moon to provide additional demarkation and two rather disjointed suns, Genoshans have merely tacked on a set of 18 days-- that self-same 'Short Cat'-- as though time is a white blank page. It's just another aspect of this new life in which, despite the exposure, the G-d Emperor has little interest in. Emma-Leigh once provided him with a bothersome little device for keeping track of such things which he promptly and very purposefully lost.

"Then come and make use of my seal, so we may have done with it," Erik says, peeling the great stone door away with a ripple of magnetism. And then, nonsensically; ' _Fi, fie, fo, fum! Into the giant's castle, lad, to receive spoils you'll soon regret._ ' The associated story escapes Erik utterly, if indeed he ever knew it in full. He merely remembers teasing Charles for one reason of another-- in his youth, the professor looked all too much the knight-errant, ready to negotiate with dragons and sit down to tea with giants. Whatever Gene expected during his long, cold wait outside, it won't be what Lehnsherr shall entrust him with very shortly. He waits a beat, to see if Charles-- or that self-destructive portion of his mind bent on aping Charles-- has some objection to saddling this many-greats grandson or nephew with such a burden.  
No reprimand is forthcoming. It's hard to tell if that's self-serving or not.

 

While he has lived in his fortress perhaps longer than anywhere he put down shallow roots on Earth, there is always a little bit of unreality in entering his own home. Lehnsherr typically puts it down to the lighting. When nature makes her own phosphorescence, it tends to be more ambient-- a texture quite unlike that of the harsh fluorescents in spaceship galleys and prison barracks, or the clinical chemlight of military outposts. Today it combines with the already cloying sense of hyper-realism to produce the impression of a stage-setting in the world of some abstractionist G-d. The feeling is even more unwelcome when Gene, now safely out of the wind, draws back his hood. The amber lambency of the floxglow stones is too kind to that already mercurial face. Another day, perhaps, and Erik might feel some pity for the boy. Cursed, as all Genoshans, with names that will never be his alone and, worse still, one that encourages his Emperor to see him only as a function. Gene; genes. A continuance-- a rare resurgence-- of some of Charles' positive traits. But only some; all that eagerness to compromise, and not an ounce of the Professor's backbone. 

The somewhat flattering play of light and shadow-- and Magneto's lonely imagination-- does not extend to the ornament about the boy's neck. Lehnsherr has never approved of such things

 

_("You realize, of course, why your objections seem somewhat hypocritical?" Hank had asked, young man's scientific certitude forged and sharpened by decades of diplomatic choreography. Being less than confrontation only drove the knife in more deeply._

_"To hell with 'seems'," Wolverine growled, perhaps more unchanging than any of his fellow Guardians. "It _is_ hypocritical. You've got some nerve, pal. If the Prof--"_

_"Think very carefully before you finish that sentence," Erik cautioned with deadly calm, only to be overridden by Mystique's brusk command._

_"Enough!" she said, "I don't like it any more than you do, but the helmet sets a precedent, and we've never had a community of telepaths this large. They're the ones making the request. We know the need is genuine. So swallow your damned pride--"_

_Logan muttered, "That'd be a neat trick."_

_"--and sign off on it. Besides," she'd shot a well-mulled but still baleful look at McCoy, "It's better than an injection.")_

 

How long ago had that been? Shortly after the establishment of the colony, that was certain. Without the reproductive limitations enforced by their desperate flight across space, mutantkind had experienced a population explosion. Magneto is sure Beast has exact dates and figures but, while he himself has a profound strategic capacity, Erik's own record-keeping-- such as it is-- is more of the impressionistic sort. A symptom, Charles might opined, of the artist nigh-on smothered within the soldier. Lehnsherr finds himself staring at the telepath's collar even as he indicates the boy should proceed him into the audience chamber. The particular example Gene wears is of two hinged continuous sections, carved painstakingly from a dense unearthly substance too brittle when heated to allow for any type of forging. _Avoxium_ they call it-- not metal, not even an alloy as exotic as the G-d Emperor's 'crown'. The closest visual comparison is nacre. The piece is clasped by more mundane steel but, while the pretty argent surface may lead the eye astray, Lehnsherr's mutant senses register the thing as an uncomfortable chameleon. Ultimately dead and cloyingly unresponsive, like plastic. From the blaze of red surfacing under those freckles, it seems Gene is aware of scrutiny, if not the precise reason for it. The boy says nothing, does not even tilt his chin in question, and the only sound in the large room is the echo of their footsteps cast back by the high vaulted ceilings. 

 

To call the great hall anything save a throne room is the height of foolishness, and would ignore Erik's very obvious intentions when he bent his will to carving the space. At the time, it amused him to fashion over-hangs and seemingly endless columns like an all-too-geometrical forest, herding the petitioner towards the raised dais and its hulking hematite cathedra. Quite medieval, for all the little relevance the word retains for Lehnsherr-- but he associated the architectural props of legitimacy with Charles and so was pleased to pull inspiration from them. Certainly, no Genoshan has a frame of reference for the oppressive of gargoyles and balustrades which Erik has deliberately left in uncomfortable states of suggestion, but they seem universally intimidated all the same. It only occurred to Magneto much later that he-- so accustomed through his many lives to imprisonment-- had created for himself what might also be taken for a dungeon.

It is also a greatly disused place, truth be told. Erik holds open audience in New Muir when the 'social season' forces him to, but he has become more and more particular as to whom he allows to trespass in his personal territory.  
How distant must a demiurge be, to remain oblivious to those industriously chipping away at his feet of flay-- and does he deserve the fall that comes with it?

 

"We none of us thought we'd end up here," Hank had said, no more than a handful of hours prior. Erik had bristled at that, and then more so when the hairy scientist added, "With only rumors to go on, I hesitated to bring this up before the group."

'Content to confine it to your pillow-talk with Mystique,' Magneto had thought but not said. McCoy had only to speak her name, say that he'd seen her, for Lehnsherr to know just what type of 'discussion' had taken place. No tenuous civility amidst stacks of books, specimen tanks, and lab equipment-- oh no! Somewhere in the lofty eyries of that miniature colosseum, Beast kept a bed for those times when the needs of his body usurped scientific zeal. There the old first-time lovers would have met, political concerns temporarily eclipsed by nostalgic hunger for familiar flesh. Magneto's jealousy had not been-- or is it now-- specific to either of the pair, any more than his occasional notice of Gene is a sign of actual temptation. What physical connection he'd had with his second in command was dust in history obliterated, and even then it had been predicated on a usury no woman (especially one as intelligent as Mystique) would tolerate for long. He'd always made do with stealing from Charles if he could not have the man himself. What sparks this ugly feeling-- at once paltry and profound-- is the image of two persons as driftwood on the sea of time, so fortunately cast up together on the same shore. An 'old friend', as it were. 

_('He wouldn't call you that even now,' whispers that knowing voice from the depths of Erik's own mind. 'You abandoned him more times than could be counted and, when your attempt to use him as a weapon failed…'  
Charles, screaming until all the Phoenix left behind were black and blistering shards. Ash; always ash.)_

Then, as now, the perfect void of Magneto's envy made the G-d Emperor wish to bare his teeth in a snarl, though Beast's will always be far more impressive. 

 

"The same procedure as last year, your grace?" Gene asks, thankfully turning around too slowly to catch his regnant's humorless grin. Lehnsherr stalks past the boy and the throne without preamble, retrieving a device from one of the locked compartments in the rudimentary communications console beyond. Those ill-shaded eyes watch the older mutant closely-- not narrowed, but with the expression of someone perpetually expecting a strike and hoping against hope to be disproven. 

"Add those nobles who have been excluded back to the list as my guests," Lehnsherr confirms. "Do your best to determine a seating arrangement with the least likelihood of blood-letting."

"Just like Foundation Day back home," the boy murmurs in a rare attempt at humor. The self-deprecation in the joke might summon certain vague similarities but, in Gene's case, it is the only humor he knows. Magneto shoots the boy a sharp look, wondering-- not for the first time-- if the boy knows why his father gave him this position. 

The G-d Emperor holds out his hand, accepting the neat tray of data cubes while Gene, scrupulous as ever despite the gloves, avoids direct contact. That Scott the Red granted such a prestigious position to the least powerful of his offspring is highly irregular. 

 

Official histories vary as to the portrayal of Magneto's relationship with the venerable Professor X-- as with all recollection, it depends on the agenda of the one who wields the pen. That he and Charles were friends early in the emergence of mutations and continued to collaborate occasionally through decades of general opposition is universally acknowledged. Beyond that, however… the mutant heirs either want their telepathic patriarch to be as pure as driven snow, or they want to paw through nightstand drawers looking for the shocking, the salacious. Certainly, not a single soul in the intervening generations has dared to question the Emperor in this regard, and Lehnsherr himself remains utterly silent. It's none of their damn business, and he has no reason to curb his possessiveness of the gentle scholar-- especially since there is very little of even Charles' ghost to go around. 

In less bitter moods, Lehnsherr is aware of the deep paranoia in such thoughts, and that the simple motivation of baiting a man's lusts can easily suffice as explanation. It is known that the G-d Emperor does not take lovers, but his icy demeanor and determination to avoid the compromised willingness of a partner have not deterred those who thing their charms enough to earn the ruler's pillow-talk ear. He has never known the exact details of his liaison's 'peculiarity', but he is suddenly willing to bet-- collar or no-- that the boy would be able to read him if bare hands were laid on bare skin. 

Gene is a marvelous receiver-- hence the Avoxium collar-- and a tactile empath on top of that. Yet aside from being too open to the pressure of both psychic and mundane minds around him, the liaison possesses a 'flaw' more damning still. He cannot send even the simplest thought or telepathic impulse, making him (for want of a better term) 'mute' in the eyes of his clansmen. 

 

The collar would be far less conspicuous without that. Such accessories are usually given to young children having difficulty with the sudden onset of or spike in psionic power, or to inexperienced telepaths venturing into the sprawling capital. Easy enough to remove, and even taken as a point of pride by some. Those with the strongest raw talent, after all, needed the most rigorous training to go amongst the undisciplined _mundane_ minds beyond their Citadels. 

A symbol, all the more venerated yet desperately unacknowledged by a class of mutants whom-- without the sapphire capes of House Xavier, Phoenix embroidery of Grey, or peerless uniform white of Frost-- often looked very… _human_. Genoshans are not so divorced from their persecution that they have forgotten or ceased to resent the concept of 'passing'. 

'But it doesn't mean there same thing for you, does it?' he thinks at Gene. 'Maybe not for more of your clansmen than we know. In a community of shared minds, of 'unparalleled openness', they want to make sure an unpredictable talent like yours doesn't overhear anything they're not supposed to.' Magneto fights down the urge to laugh bitterly, perhaps endlessly, at himself even as he presses the tip of of the device against the first of the pure silica data cubes. It's only a little thicker than a stylus, and the femtosecond laser heartlessly burns a light mirror image onto the smooth surface. In mere moments, the Magneto's seal both marks his approval visually and makes the data stored there incorruptible. The image itself is the old, stylized 'M' of the Brotherhood

_('M' for Mutant, had been the intention.  
'M' for Magneto, the older X-Men once liked to sneer.) _

given the mouth and tail of some ferocious sea-beast. Or the idea of such a behemoth, at any rate. Erik may have forgotten the creatures' names (including that to which he was so often compared), but he knows they had nothing like this on Earth.

Repeating the process quickly with each cube, Erik never the less experiences a paltry yet uncomfortable parallel with the process of branding. His left arm forearm itches, psychosomatic as ever, reminding him of the way those numbers warped and decayed with the aging skin of his first life. Lurid yellow cloth; the terrible convergence of angles worn proudly by those who claimed 'death before dishonor' and then swore they were not even present for the crime. Lehnsherr remembers these things, if not always their exact meaning or context, and the intervening centuries do not prevent them from stirring the remnants of the terrified child within. Surely that creature should have passed from bone to fossil, and then to dust by now.

 

Context. 'Context is everything,' Charles liked to say, always granting too much leeway. The benefit of the doubt. 'Tread carefully, my friend,' with a warm hand on Erik's shoulder or arm, or-- when giving more intimate advice-- oddly anchoring at the small of Lehnsherr's back. And so they shall fred carefully for, little though Magneto may like it, Hank's hesitation in the subject of the rumors surrounding Haller and insistence that they not take action is absolutely correct. After all, what did Mystique really learn, as she wandered in her many guises? Far less than she would have in other circumstances. Changing her outward appearance only fools low-level or collared telepaths, and even then only if their suspicions have not been aroused. She can confirm an increased emphasis on psi-rating, and a preoccupation with the failure to produce a single omega-class telepath since planet-fall. There are whispers that-- while no unions have been dissolved-- couples producing 'weak' children are being encouraged into a sort of procreative concubinage that might 'yield better results'. Coupled with the known fact that secondary and non-psionic mutations in Houses Xavier, Grey, and Frost had dropped dramatically in the past few decades, and you had a recipe for a philosophy McCoy hesitated to name.

 

_Eugenics_. Magneto had not been shy about throwing the term in Hank's face. Even as McCoy cautioned with the history of misappropriated ideas and pointed out how easily Haller's plans might stir resentment in other Houses and start a witch hunt disastrous for all, their eyes had met. How long has it been since any immortal Guardian has felt truly daunted by anything? Neither Beast nor his half-adversarial guest had been foolish enough to give the concept voice, but it didn't take a telepath to guess what they were both thinking.  
_'If only Charles were here.'_

With a faint, sardonic smile, Lehnsherr holds the tray of cubes out towards Gene, taking yet another silica square from his own pocket. He seals it as well, setting it gently atop the others while the liaison stares at him questioningly.  
A moratorium on overt action does not preclude any action at all.

"That is for Lord Haller," the G-d Emperor says with deadly placidity. "I must insist you deliver it personally."

"My Emperor!" Gene stutters, and his panic banishes all traces of any ghost. "I am not auth-- that is, surely one of my sisters, or Emma-Leigh, is more worthy…"

"Emma-Leigh has lost what little favor she had with me." Solemn, final. "And, if you are worthy enough to be in my service, then surely Haller can admit you into his presence."

"… Yes, your Grace." A deep bow, while the collar and data cubes flash. Such strange things, the latter, like a child's blocks or… there had been a game, on Earth, in which tiles were tipped. 

 

They will see then, what falls and who scatters in the wake of this tiny pressure. Haller's reaction-- to both message and messenger-- and that of the desperately political Scott the Red will be only the tip of the iceberg. Two snakes, two heads; but how many others in waiting? Like calls unto like, and Erik will do whatever it takes-- exercise or invent any authority-- to move the weight-bearing tile

( _coin_ )

before this starts all over again.

 

_("You can't _make_ people be good," the worn echo of Xavier's voice, close and tangible in the dark._

_"I've told you, we already are the better men," Erik's own tones, arguing lazily. Fires banked, for a time, by an intimacy only shadowed in their physical union. 'And you're the telepath, so I rather think that's my line.'_

_"I said 'people', not 'humans'.")_

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * **Timeline note:** Since this fic takes into account the first three original X-Men movies and XMFC but assumes no timeline reset occurred in DOFP, I've stuck to a more comics-esque canon for Magneto and his children. Sadly, Nina never existed in this universe, since I don't think Magda Górska and Erik would have met without the massive skew. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **Glossary/Credits**  
>  [+] 'Watch Me'-- cribbed from Stephen King's most excellent _Dark Tower_ series; something like Poker.  
>  [+] _mazel 'ra_ \- the opposite of 'mazel tov'. Bad luck from the heavens/stars.  
> [+] _"Context is everything."_ \- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)  
> [+] _"What you risk reveals what you value."_ \- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (1987)  
> [+] ETA: in my haste to post, I forgot to credit Michio Kaku's Visions (1998) for the explanation of quantum entanglement that allows for the possibility of large-scale teleportation. Scientists are doing some amazing work teleporting protons now!  
> [+] **femtosecond laser** \- one quadrillionth of a second. X_x'' Turns out, data cubes aren't such a far stretch. Researchers at Southampton recently developed a way to store data on glass-- in hundreds of terabytes!-- that would last for billions of years. Makes my nerdy little heart go thumpity-thump.
> 
> … though not as much as feedback does. Priorities, yo. ^_~


End file.
